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Title: Tiger River
Author: Friel, Arthur Olney (1885-1959)
Date of first publication: 1923
Edition used as base for this ebook:
New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1923
[first edition]
Date first posted: 9 November 2012
Date last updated: 9 November 2012
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1008
This ebook was produced by
David T. Jones, Mary Meehan, Al Haines
& the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada Team
at http://www.pgdpcanada.net
TIGER RIVER
BY ARTHUR O. FRIEL
Author of "THE PATHLESS TRAIL"
_Publishers_
HARPER & BROTHERS
New York and London
1923
TIGER RIVER
Copyright, 1923
By Harper & Brothers
Printed in the U.S.A.
_First Edition_
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. WHERE WATERS MEET 1
II. THE RIVER OF MISSING MEN 11
III. THE CONQUISTADOR 23
IV. THE POWER OF GOLD 35
V. EYES IN THE BUSH 48
VI. IN THE PATH OF THE STORM 59
VII. THE CLAWS OF THE TIGRE 71
VIII. THE WHITE INDIANS 83
IX. A LIFE FOR A LIFE 95
X. RED SPOTS 106
XI. THE LOOTER 118
XII. DEATH PASSES 129
XIII. FOLLOWED 139
XIV. BURNING SANDS 149
XV. JOSÉ TAKES A CHANCE 161
XVI. THREE PASS OUT 175
XVII. NORTH 185
XVIII. THE TOELESS MAN 194
XIX. THE GOLDEN MOUNTAINS 205
XX. DEAD MAN'S LAND 218
XXI. INTO THE ABYSS 229
XXII. THE END OF THE TRAIL 242
XXIII. CIRCE 254
XXIV. LOST SOULS 268
XXV. THE DEVIL'S BREW 281
XXVI. PHANTOM TREASURE 293
XXVII. THE HEAD-HUNTERS 306
XXVIII. THE MOUNTAINS SPEAK 317
XXIX. OUT OF THE WALL 329
XXX. THE KING OF NO MAN'S LAND 341
TIGER RIVER
CHAPTER I
WHERE WATERS MEET
At the edge of the jungle a rifle roared. High up among the branches of
a tall buttress-rooted tree--more than a hundred feet above the soggy
ground--a big, red, bearded monkey lurched out into space. Headlong he
fell. A swift rip of breaking underbrush, a dull thump, and he lay
lifeless on the earth.
At the base of another tree a man quietly levered a fresh cartridge into
his gun barrel. For a few seconds he stood motionless, weapon up, eyes
sweeping the surrounding tree butts and bush clumps. Then he let the
rifle sink and, velvet-footed, stepped forward.
"So, Señor Cotomono," he said softly, "you will make your hideous
howling, eh, to tell all the world that I am here? You will yell to the
tigres of this Tiger Water to come and tear José Martinez, yes? Too late
you learn that it does not pay to make too much noise with the mouth."
A sardonic smile played under his fierce black mustache. Even as the
words slipped from his tongue his gaze lifted from the motionless animal
and once more plumbed the vistas about him. Tall, sinewy, hawk-nosed,
bold-eyed, red-kerchiefed, belted with a long machete, alert and wary as
the great hunting-cat he had just mentioned--he looked a buccaneer
chieftain marooned in a tropic wilderness, poised to fight man, beast,
or demon.
A minute passed. No sound came, except the ceaseless rustle of unseen
small life creeping about in the shadows during the hot hours of
mid-day. With a lightning shift of manner he relaxed.
"Hah!" he growled. "José, you are over-careful. You have hardly left the
Amazon--you have only just landed on the Tigre Yacu--and yet you stand
as if you were far upstream and had shot a head-hunter instead of a poor
cotomono. You disgust me, José mio. Come, little howler of the heights,
and toast your toes at my fire."
In one motion he swooped up the dead monkey and whirled on his heel. A
few strides to the rear, and he halted at water: clear water, about
seventy yards broad, flowing southeast, at whose margin floated a small
canoe. Some rods downstream the limpid little river ended, merging into
a turbid yellow flood rolling eastward--the mighty Amazon, here known as
the Marañon.
Two swift glances he shot to right and left--one upstream, one out at
the tawny monarch of rivers. Only empty water, glaring under the sun,
met his gaze. Leaning his rifle against a handy tree butt, he drew his
machete and sliced some tindery bamboo into kindling. A few deft slashes
with the same blade dressed the monkey for roasting. Then, adding more
fuel, he squatted and concentrated his attention on the cooking of his
meal.
A stiff breeze came rocketing down the clear-water stream, snatching the
smoke of his fire and flinging it playfully down to the great river. And
almost at once, as if the tang of smoke and the savory odor of broiling
meat had evoked life from the depths of that river, something came
crawling into the yellow vacancy at the end of the jungle shores. Foot
by foot, yard by yard, it nosed its clumsy way out of the west until its
whole length floated there, only a little way from the land. There, for
a moment, it hung motionless.
A grotesque, misshapen monster of the jungle, it seemed: a low-bodied
thing some thirty feet long, with half a dozen short, rigid legs on each
side; a humpy creature with a small square bump in the middle, a big
round one near its tail, and more than a dozen smaller protuberances
along its back. Presently its little legs moved backward, lifted, came
forward--flashing glints of sunlight from its wet feet--and slid
backward again. Its blunt nose turned up the clear water. It grew
larger, crawling toward the spot whence the smoke rolled. And the rough
little breeze, as if it had done its duty in summoning the river-beast,
passed and was gone, leaving the smoke to rise straight above the
squatting man like a telltale finger.
The man did not see the thing approach. Around him stood waist-high
grass, which now, in his doubled-up position, rose just above his head
and shut off from his view all but the fire and his meat. The
river-creature advanced quietly, as if a bit wary. Fifty feet off shore
it paused. From it burst a roaring voice.
"Hey there!"
The man in the grass started, spun about, lengthened himself toward his
rifle, and in one second was behind the tree with gun cocked. His
narrowed eyes stabbed through the sun-glare at the clumsy thing which
had slipped up so smoothly within pistol-shot of him. In one tight
squint he saw what it was.
A Peruvian garretea, or river-canoe, with a pile of supplies corded in
the middle, a curve-roofed cabin at the stern, twelve copper-skinned
paddlers and a steersman, and four khaki-shirted white men: that was the
monster. The second glance of the lurking José told him that all the
white men were deeply tanned and well bearded; that two of the beards
were black, one yellow, and one unmistakably red. Then the voice spoke
again.
"Come on out, feller. We ain't huntin' nobody. I see ye got a bandanna
on yer bean, so ye'd oughter be a white man. You savvy United States?"
The eyes of José widened.
"Por Dios!" he muttered. "Is it--it is not--yet the voice is the same!
And a red beard----"
He stepped forth, rifle still ready but not aimed.
"Sí, I savvy, señor," he answered. "Who comes?"
"Friends," clipped another voice. "Any objection to our tying up here?
Want to sell that meat?"
"It is my dinner, señor, and not for sale," José replied coolly, still
squinting at the boat. "Tying up here is as you wish. I do not own this
river."
"All right. We'll shoot our own meat. Paddle!"
At the command the paddlers swayed in unison. The garretea floated
nearer. Then out broke the first voice.
"Say, cap, lookit the guy! Ain't he a dead ringer for ol' Hozy, the lad
that was with us last year on that there, now, Javaree river down below?
By gosh, I wonder----Say, feller, mebbe this is a sassy question, but
what's yer name?"
The speaker was the red-bearded, red-headed man: a broad-chested,
muscular fellow whose blue eyes peered keenly from under a cupped hand
and whose wide face glowed with eagerness. Into the hawk face of José
flashed the light of certainty. His teeth gleamed and his rifle sank. In
three strides he was at the water's edge.
"It is the Señor Tim!" he cried. "I thought--but I was not sure. And El
Capitán McKay--Señor Knowlton--sí, yo soy, amigos! It is I, José
Martinez, at your service!"
"Well, by thunder!" laughed the blond man. "Welcome to our company,
José, old top! I'll pump your arm off as soon as I can get out of this
blooming boat. Give you a drink too--the occasion calls for a libation.
Tim, break out a bottle of hooch."
"Right ye are, looey. Hozy, ol' sock, ye sure are a sight for sore
eyes--bokoo jolly, tray beans, like them frogs use to say in France.
Oo-la-la! Look out there, ye gobs! Timmy Ryan is landin', toot sweet."
And land he did--crowding between the Indian paddlers and launching
himself over the bow as it touched shore. As his boots plunked into the
mud his right hand seized that of José and wrung it in a mighty grip.
"Ye ol' son-of-a-gun!" he chuckled. "Ye ol' slashin', tearin',
hip-shootin' death's-head! Jest as homely and full o' cussedness as
ever, ain't ye? Mind the time we blowed them Red Bone cannibals all to
glory? Gosh, that was a reg'lar scrap, I'll tell the world!"
"I remember it well," laughed José. "But you need not break my hand,
amigo. The Señor Knowlton seems to wish to use it."
The blond man too had landed, and now he shouldered the exuberant Tim
aside and proceeded to make good his promise to pump the Spaniard's arm,
meanwhile giving him a running fire of banter. After him, cool and
unhurried, came a tall, black-bearded, wide-shouldered man whose set
face and bleak gray eyes now were softened by a welcoming smile. Last of
all debarked a stocky man of medium height, with hat pulled well down
over his brow.
In contrast to the red Tim and the blond Knowlton, the blackbeard spoke
no word as his hand grasped that of José; but his brief, hearty grip and
direct gaze spoke what his tongue did not. And to him José gave a look
and a tone of deeper respect than that accorded to his predecessors.
"Capitán!" he bowed. Then, as their hands parted, he turned suddenly
away. When he swung back his bold eyes were a trifle misty and his smile
strained.
"Pardon the weakness, señores," he said. "It is sudden, this meeting.
And there are few men who care to take the hand of José Martinez,
outlaw--though there are many who would take his head."
"Grrrumph! Let 'em come and git it--they'll have a fat time bumpin' ye
off while this gang's here, Hozy!" erupted Tim. "We don't give a
tinker's dam if ye're a dozen outlaws. Ye're a square guy and ye've got
no yeller streak, and we dang well know it. Besides which, there ain't
no law in this neck o' the woods, unless they lugged some in since the
last time we was here, which I sure hope they ain't. They's too much law
in the world now, most of it made by crooks. But say, ain't ye got a
word for Dave Rand here? Ye'd oughter remember him."
He motioned toward the last man ashore, who stood impassively waiting.
"Rand?" echoed José. "Señor Rand I do not----Ho! Por Dios! Is this the
man who was the Raposa--the Wild Dog of the Javary?"
"The same," answered Rand himself. As he spoke he lifted his broad hat,
revealing green-gray eyes and dark hair in which an odd white mark stood
out above one ear.
"The man who was a crazy captive of the Red Bone Indians," he went on,
"and whom you last saw as a naked, painted wreck being dragged home to
the States by McKay and Knowlton and Tim here. No wonder you didn't
recognize me. Shake?"
"Indeed yes, señor, with pride." And the final handshake was completed.
"But how come you here in South America again--and, of all places, on
the banks of this dangerous water? You had best move on quickly,
comrades, all of you."
Tim interrupted.
"Aw, who's scairt of a li'l brook like this? And say, feller, yer meat's
burnin'. Git out o' me way and I'll save it. We got to eat."
José wheeled, pounced, retrieved the blackened meat, and gazed at it
ruefully.
"A third of my dinner gone," he grumbled. "But this cotomono was a big
one, and we can each get a few mouthfuls of fresh meat from him. Your
Indians can find meat of their own if they will hunt back from the
water."
But the Indians seemed to want no meat. They did not even show any
intention of landing. Every man of them had remained in the boat, and,
though they sniffed wistfully at the odor of the cooking, their eyes
were continually watching the thick tropical tangle near at hand. Uneasy
mutterings went among them, and repeatedly they grunted two words:
"Tigre Yacu."
The northerners stared at them. José, the jungle rover, alone seemed to
understand. He gave the paddlers a brief glance, nodded, and let his own
gaze go roving upstream.
"What ails them guys?" wondered Tim. "Is this place ha'nted or
somethin'?"
"This, Señor Tim, is the Tiger Water," José explained, "and it is bad
country. Above here----"
He stopped abruptly. Across his words smote a dread sound.
From the jungle behind them broke a coughing roar: a hoarse, harsh,
malignant note of menace which struck both brown and white men like a
blow. It was the voice of the South American tiger, savage king of the
jungle, eater of men; the voice of the Tigre Yacu, on whose banks lurked
unknown things; the voice of Death.
CHAPTER II
THE RIVER OF MISSING MEN
For a moment the jungle and the river were still. No man moved; and the
rustle of small things in bush and branches was hushed as if all life
held its breath. Then, calmly, tall Captain McKay spoke.
"Sounds hungry. A hungry jaguar is bad medicine. Get aboard, men, and
we'll shove out a little. Come along, José. Want to talk to you."
José glowered into the tangle as if half minded to go seeking the tigre.
But when Knowlton seconded the invitation he shrugged and nodded.
"Climb in," said the blond man. "Nothing to stay here for. The Indians
won't come ashore, your meat is cooked, and we can talk better where
that brute won't drop on somebody's back. Besides," with a laugh, "we
have to dig up that bottle I spoke of."
"Your last reason is much the best one, señor," José grinned. "Now that
I think of it, my throat is most dry."
Back into the garretea the white men clambered, and at once the paddlers
shoved off. But for McKay's sharp commands, they would have driven the
boat back to the Amazon. As it was, they reluctantly stopped work after
a few strokes, and a moment later a sixty-pound weight plunged over the
bow. Fifteen yards out, the boat swung at anchor.
Four of the whites went aft to the shelter of the shady hoop-roofed
cabin, which rose importantly from a ten-foot palm-bark deck. Tim, the
fifth, halted amidships and sought something among the supplies,
straightening up presently with a quart bottle on which the Indians
fixed a longing gaze. Not until the red-bearded man entered the cabin
did the aborigines take their eyes from his liquid treasure. Then they
silently moved forward and made a fire in a big clay pot in the bow--the
"galley" of their crude ship.
"Wal, Hozy, ol'-timer, here's how!" proclaimed Tim, flourishing the
bottle. "Reg'lar stuff, this is--some o' that there, now, Annie Sadder,
double distilled and a hundred proof. Take a husky gargle of it before
ye eat. Ye git more of a jolt on an empty stummick. Shoot!"
José shot. The anisadoo gurgled down his throat like water. When he
handed back the bottle his eyes glistened and a fourth of the liquor had
disappeared from mortal view.
"Gosh!" muttered Tim. "Half a pint to one swaller! Ye got me beat. But
I'll do me best."
Measuring off another half pint with a thumb-nail, he opened his
capacious mouth, nipped his nose between his free thumb and forefinger,
and let the bottle gurgle. Presently he gasped, shot the bottle to
McKay, seized a gourd, and seemed to dive overboard; but his legs and
body remained on the deck, and the gourd came up full of river water.
Several gulps, and he arose, breathing hard.
"That's what we come up here for, anyways--clean water," he alibied. "So
I'm gittin' mine now. That Ammyzon water is awright if ye let it settle,
but she sure needs some settlin'. Don't ye want a chaser, too, Hozy? No?
Then eat somethin' quick, before ye git vi'lent. We don't want to have
to fight ye."
But José only grinned and licked his mustache, bowing to Knowlton as the
latter saluted him with the bottle and took a short pull. McKay drank
without a quiver. Rand barely touched the glass to his lips, then
replaced the cork.
"Hard case, this feller Rand," winked Tim. "Last time he got holt of a
bottle he swallered the whole dang thing and then chewed up the cork for
a chaser. Right after that he sat down hard and the bottle busted inside
him, so he has to go easy a few days. If ye don't believe me, kick him,
and ye'll hear the glass jingle."
"You'll be more likely to hear the angels singing," countered the
green-eyed man, with a tight smile. "Fact is, José, I'm not drinking any
more. Drink got me into hell once. Maybe you remember."
The Peruvian nodded.
"Sí. It was drinking which got you into a fight at Manaos some years ago
when you were traveling up the Amazon. You struck down a man--a
German--so hard that you believed him killed, and you hid on a steamer
and fled up the river. Then you went into the wild cannibal country on
the Rio Javary, fought another German--Schwandorf--who tried to make you
steal Indian women for his slave trade, and were shot in the head by
that man. The bullet crazed you, and for years you wandered among the
cannibals, who let you live only because they feared you. The
Raposa--the Wild Dog of the jungle! I heard of you long before I ever
saw you."
"And if it hadn't been for Mac and Merry Knowlton and Tim, who came
hunting me and knocked sense back into my head with a gun butt, I'd be
there yet," Rand acquiesced grimly.
José nodded again.
"Es verdad. But that time is past, and you are a strong man once more.
Yet I am much astonished to see you again in the jungle. If I have it
right, these señores came seeking you because you were heir to a great
estate and they were commissioned to find you. A North American
millionaire is the last kind of man I should expect to see here, even if
he had not suffered here as you have."
Rand smiled wryly.
"But I don't happen to be a millionaire. I haven't even a million cents,
not to mention dollars."
"Por Dios! There were two million dollars--did you not say so, capitán?
And that was hardly a year ago! How have you spent so much money in so
short a time?"
"Didn't spend a cent of it. Never had it to spend. It's this way:
"My uncle, Philip Dawson, died. His son, Paul, who fought in the great
war, was supposed to have been killed in action in the Argonne Forest.
So the Dawson estate was legally mine--for a while.
"But Paul wasn't killed. He was badly wounded, captured, and treated
none too well; and he got aphasia--forgot who he was. The War Department
mixed up things, recorded him as dead, and shipped home the body of some
other soldier as his. A lot of those blunders happened in the war.
"Just about the time these chaps were finding me down here, a friend of
Paul's found him over there. He was working as a field hand, and even
thought he was a German--he had traveled a lot as a boy and could talk
German as easily as English; so when he found himself among German
people and didn't know who he was or how he came there, he thought he
belonged there. Of course his friend got him back to the States at once,
and by the time I showed up he was there in the hands of specialists
who were bringing his memory back to him. So that let me out."
José carved a section of monkey haunch. Slicing it with careful
exactness, he passed portions to his companions. All fell to chewing.
"But I thtill do not thee, theñor," lisped José then, his mouth nearly
full, "why you return to thith plathe."
"We're partners, chasing the rainbow," Knowlton vouchsafed after
swallowing his morsel. "We three were well rewarded for getting Dave
back, even though he wasn't the heir; the estate had to make good its
contract with us. Dave wasn't broke, either--he had some money of his
own in a couple of banks. So we got restless, pooled our money, and came
down to the Andes to make ourselves billionaires by finding the
treasures of the Incas or anything else lying around loose.
"But we were out of luck. We poked around the upper Marañon awhile and
tried a couple of other prospects, but got nothing but hard knocks. So
we got this boat and came along down. Thought we'd take a whirl at the
Napo country, just below here. Loads of gold in the Napo, we hear;
Indians pick it out of the river bed, and so on. Want to join us and try
your luck?"
José did not answer at once. His black eyes searched the face of each
man as if seeking some sign of derision or amusement. He found none.
"You jest, señor," he said presently.
"Not a bit of it. What do you say, Rod--Tim--Dave? Is José a welcome
member of this gang?"
"I'll say he is!" rumbled Tim. The other two nodded decisively.
The Peruvian's face glowed. But he shook his head.
"I thank you, señores, but I cannot. I have no such outfit as you, I
have no money, I am not one of you but José Martinez--outlaw. I could
not be on an equal footing----"
"That's rot, José," McKay cut in. "If we didn't want you we wouldn't ask
you. Money and outfit are immaterial. You have something we
lack--intimate knowledge of this region. Put your knowledge in the pot
with our outfit, and you owe nothing. Coming in?"
Again José held his tongue before answering. Pride gleamed in his eyes,
but those eyes went up the Tiger River as if visioning something the
others could not see. Absently he rolled and smoked a cigarette. Not
until he snapped the charred butt overboard did he speak.
"Señores," he said abruptly, "the tale of gold in the Napo is old. Too
old. Everybody knows it. True, gold is there: gold dust washed from the
Llanganati mountains of Ecuador. But men have known of it for hundreds
of years. Many expeditions have gone in after it. Some have come out,
some have not. Savages--accidents--fever--there are many white men's
bones in the Napo jungle. There will be many more.
"Gold is there, yes. But why journey to the Napo, and hundreds of miles
up the Napo--it is eight hundred miles long, amigos--to seek a thing
which is nearer at hand? Why poke about a river where the workings are
known and covered by fighting men, when before you opens a stream where
you can take anything you find?"
The Americans started. Their glances darted up the Tigre Yacu.
"You mean----" Knowlton began.
"Sssst!" José hissed warningly.
Two of the crew were approaching, bearing salt fish and hot coffee to
their patrones. The Peruvian eyed them narrowly, but none gave sign of
having heard or understood the talk. Stolidly they placed the food on
the raised deck, turned, and went back to the bow.
"Speak on," said McKay. "They know no English except a few words like
'paddle,' and so on."
"Bueno. You guess it--I mean this Tigre Yacu.
"Behold, compañeros. It is but a little brook, yes, if one thinks of the
great Marañon or the Napo. Yet it runs a long way up--one hundred fifty
miles or more--and it is deep; canoes can travel far on it. And it
heads between two long mountain spurs, which form the split end of the
Cordillera del Pastassa. And that cordillera, amigos, is itself a spur
from those same Llanganati mountains whence comes the gold of the Napo
and its tributary river, the Curaray!
"See. It is thus."
Dipping a finger into his coffee, he drew on the bark deck a figure
somewhat like a crude, elongated letter "h." Between the legs of this
symbol he traced another line running southeast.
"The long line is the Cordillera del Pastassa, the curved one its spur,"
he explained. "And the third line is this Tigre Yacu. North of this
Cordillera runs the Curaray, which, as I say, bears gold. Some of its
tributaries flow from this cordillera. Who shall say that the
cordillera, an offshoot of the Llanganati, is not bursting with gold?
Who shall say that much--or all--of the gold of the Curaray does not
come from this cordillera instead of the Llanganati? Madre de Dios!
Quien sabe?"
His face was flaming now. And, looking into his hot black eyes, the blue
and the gray and the green eyes of the northerners suddenly flared with
the reckless light of the gold lure. Rainbow-chasers all, hardy,
venturesome, fearless, they were of that red-blooded breed which plunges
straight into the jaws of death if within those jaws lies a prize worth
the daring. In one flashing instant the projected journey to the Napo
vanished from their minds like wind-blown mist. The Napo was old. The
Tigre Yacu, unknown, mysterious, had caught them in a spell.
It was McKay, canny and controlled, who spoke first.
"If there's gold here, why has it been passed by?"
One laconic word answered him.
"Jiveros."
"Hm. The head-hunters! Thought we were past their country."
"Oof! The Jiveros?" blurted Tim. "The fellers that shrink yer head to
the size of an orange? Them guys?"
"Them guys," José echoed, with a slight smile. "Their country is farther
west, as el capitán says: the rivers Pastassa, Morona, Santiago; but
they know no boundaries and they roam far. It is more than possible that
even now some of them lurk yonder in the bush, watching us. Wise men do
not go up these rivers west of the Napo--only fools like José.
"That was why I hesitated so long before telling you of the treasure
that may be up this stream. To risk my own life is nothing; to lure my
friends into a death trap with me is much. But--we were together among
the southern cannibals not long ago. So I tell you."
He gulped some coffee. At once he went on:
"Nor is that all. Somewhere up this stream is something--I know not
what--which makes men mad. I am not the first fool who has thought of
gold up here and gone after it. How many men have gone in here I know
not. But until recently no man has come out.
"Two weeks ago came one Rafael Pardo down to Iquitos. A hard, reckless
man he was; a killer and other things. I say he _was_. He no longer is.
"Months ago he went up this Tigre Yacu, boasting that he feared no man,
beast, God or devil. Days ago he came back, naked, bearded, filthy,
raving. But with him he brought gold. A hide bag he had, and it was
heavy with nuggets. Yes, nuggets, not dust. His skin was seamed with
scars like those of a whip. His toes were gone--every one cut off. How
he walked through the jungle, how he lived without weapons, I do not
know. But he came--and he brought gold."
"Did anyone learn what he had been through?" asked Rand.
"No. He was utterly mad. He screamed frightful things, but such as made
no sense. Then some one stole his gold. When he found it gone he ran
about yelling, fell down frothing, and died."
For a long minute there was silence. All peered up the stream. The flush
of excitement had died from their faces, but no indecision or fear
showed in them. Their jaws were set and their eyes narrowed as if they
were sizing up an enemy. And they were. In each man's mind flamed a
challenge to the river of missing men.
Then, all at once, their heads jerked to the right. The Indians in the
bow had risen from their squat and were facing toward the spot where the
Peruvian's little fire had smoked, and where his canoe still lay. The
blaze now had died. And through the waist-high grass something large,
something stealthy, was creeping from the jungle.
CHAPTER III
THE CONQUISTADOR
Ready rifles slid out from the cabin. From four of them sounded the
quiet snicks of safeties being thrown off. The hammer of José's
big-bulleted repeater clicked dully and poised at full cock.
"The shot is mine, amigos," he reminded them. So, of the five guns, his
was the only one to take aim.
The telltale grass stood still. For a breathless minute no sign of
movement was visible. Slowly then it swayed again above the creeping
thing, marking another few inches of advance.
_Crash!_
José's muzzle jumped. Blue smoke drifted along the water. The grass
shook. From it burst a screech of appalling fury.
The dense growth of green split. At the water's edge a great black cat
creature poised, eyes glaring, fangs gleaming, tail thrashing the grass
like a maddened snake. On one ebony shoulder a streak of red flowed and
widened.
"Hah-yah!" mocked José, his own teeth bared in a tigerish snarl. "Here
am I, you devil! Come to me!"
The devil came.
In one leap it shot ten feet from the bank. Its big paws, with long
claws unsheathed, commenced swimming almost before its powerful body
splashed. Eyes fixed in malevolent hate on the man who had wounded and
mocked it, teeth still bared in a soundless snarl, the brute lunged
straight for the boat.
From the Indians broke guttural gasps of fear. From the white men
sounded short growls. From four high-power rifles cracked whip-like
reports. From the Peruvian's black-powder gun another blunt roar thumped
out.
The black tiger, suddenly motionless, sank in a red welter.
"Guess it was just as well that we did our talking out here," Knowlton
observed. "Sorry to horn into your party, José, but I just had to slam a
bullet into that fellow."
"It is nothing, señor. I had first blood--and last." Then, grinning, he
added: "I have made a good beginning on the Tigre Yacu. I have shot a
black tiger and a curaca."
"Curaca? A chief? How come?"
"Ha, ha, ha! That is my little joke. 'Curaca' means an Indian chief. But
the male cotomono monkey, with his long beard, also is called 'curaca.'
You have just eaten some of my chief-monkey."
"Umph! Feller's got to be eddicated to git these here South American
jokes," muttered Tim. "So I been chewin' a chief's leg, hey? 'Twas
tough stuff, anyways."
"If you go up this stream with me, Señor Tim, you may have to eat worse
things before you come out," was the ominous reply. "But our coffee
cools. Let us finish it."
Back in the shade of the cabin the five chewed and sipped in the silence
of thought. When nothing but bare bones and empty gourds remained and
tobacco was burning, Knowlton reached to a peg at one side, took down a
roll of rubberized fabric, extracted a number of maps, and spread one on
the bark floor. After a moment of study he nodded.
"Your cordillera starts from the Llanganati, all right," he said. "And
it splits into spurs, with the Tigre starting between them. Guess this
country has been explored."
"I think not, señor," José differed.
"Then how would the map makers know what was in there?"
"How do I know what is in there?" the jungle rover countered. "Because I
have talked with Indians who know. Canoemen of the Napo, they were, whom
I met on the Amazon. Is it not quite likely that the maps were made by
men who never have been here, but who have taken the word of others who
in turn had asked Indians?"
The blond Northerner was momentarily silenced. But presently he added:
"Well, see here. The map agrees with you as to the mountains, but it
gives this country east of the Cordillera del Pastassa to the Zaparos,
not the Jiveros. The Jiveros are west of the Rio Pastassa."
A faint smile twitched the Spanish mouth.
"Sí? That is a great relief, señor. Now we can go on without caution. If
we meet Jiveros and they seek to cut off our heads, behold! we shall
show them that map and tell them they have no right here, and they will
go speeding back to the Pastassa."
Tim snickered. McKay and Rand smiled broadly. Knowlton flushed, laughed
in a vexed way, and shoved the map back among the others.
"Faith, bein' an army officer gits a feller into lots o' bad habits,"
remarked Tim. "These two guys, Hozy, was officers in the big war, ye
see; Cap was a real cap'n and li'l ol' Blondy Knowlton was me
looey--lieutenant. Course, they had to use maps a lot, and them maps o'
Europe are right: everything's jest like the map says, except mebbe the
enemy. So looey got so used to believin' the map he ain't quite got out
o' the habit yet. But say, what kind o' guys are them there--uh--whaddye
call 'em, looey?"
"Zaparos."
José waved a contemptuous hand.
"Animals. Wandering beasts of the forest, nothing more. They are short,
flat of nose, with little eyes set slanting in their heads. They cannot
count above ten, and for any number above three they must use their
fingers. They have no towns, make only flimsy huts, live apart from each
other in any place they like, then move on elsewhere. The only thing
they make is the hammock: they are the hammock makers of the Provincia
del Oriente. Oh, I was forgetting--they make also a drink called
ayahuasca; but it is the stupid drink of a stupid people, which only
makes one sleep. They are not even interesting. There is no danger from
them."
"Uh-huh. Wal, what about the head-shrinkin' fellers? They sure oughter
be interestin'."
The outlaw smiled grimly.
"You have said it, Señor Tim. There, amigos, is a race of men! Never
have they been conquered. Neither my people of Spain nor the old Incas
before us could make them bend their necks. They are fighters--fighters
like my own ancestors, who, por Dios, were no such sleek pot-bellied
politicians as the men of Peru now have become! And though I do not
intend to lose my head to any man, and will fight like ten devils to
keep it, if it must be lost I would rather give it to the warriors of
the Jiveros than to the sneaking, foot-lapping police of my own race.
Sí!"
His swarthy face, tanned deep by years of jungle sun, twisted in sudden
savage bitterness. Abruptly he shot up to his full height, took a
pantherish step, whirled, gazed slit-eyed at the four who had made him
their partner.
"Listen to me!" he rasped. "I, José Martinez, am of the Conquistadores!
In me runs the blood of a man who dared the seas--dared the Andes--dared
the jungle--and made this a land of Spain! But for him and his comrades,
what would this Peru--that Ecuador--Colombia, Venezuela, the accursed
Chile, Argentina--what would they be to-day? Indian lands. The strong
hand, the cold steel, the fire and blood of my fathers, won all this
great country.
"And what are their sons to-day? Perros amarillos! Yellow dogs! Dogs who
yelp out from among them like a wild beast a man who still has the
strength of his ancestors--dogs who hide behind their police--dogs who
fight only with cunning and treachery and law, law, law!
"The Conquistadores were heroes, because they fought and killed. I am an
outlaw, because I have fought and killed. Yet never have I killed a man
who would not kill me. Not that I have always waited to be
attacked--else I should be dead, long since. I have seen the death in a
man's eye and I have acted. So I live. But I live with a price on my
head. Why? Because I first killed a greasy politician, beyond the
mountains, who had sent hired tools to murder me because he wanted my
woman----"
He broke off short and struggled for control. But the flood of his fury
burst forth again.
"The slime! The crawling scum! I killed him--sí!--and his paid assassins
too I killed. Hah! But he was a politician--a maker of laws. His
brother makers of laws lashed the police--the army--all of Peru--on my
trail. So am I an outlaw.
"Bueno! So be it. I am a man. I am among men. If I lose my head to those
Jiveros I lose it to men. And my bones will rest quiet, and my shrunken
head hanging in a Jivero hut will grin at men--fighting men!"
His chin lifted sharply, and his eyes blazed at the farther shore. As if
he saw Jiveros there, he did grin--a hard, deadly grin. And the four
North Americans silently watched him level-eyed and knew he spoke truth.
Piratical, flamboyant, fiery and fearless, he needed only a coat of mail
and a sword to become the reincarnation of the long-dead conquerors
whose iron will and bloody deeds had crushed a continent. He was a man
born too late to live in the Peru beyond the mountains; but here in El
Oriente, where the quick hand and the ready steel still ruled, he was at
home. In him blazed the same flame that had burned in the veins of
Pizarro, Orellana, Aguirre, and their bold and violent followers; and it
would drive him up this Tigre Yacu, to gold or to death, as it had
driven them into the dread jungles of the Napo and the Huallaga.
Slowly the fire in his face died out. At length, with a shrug, he turned
back to them.
"But you would hear of those Jiveros, not of José," he deprecated.
"Something of them and their habits you must have learned before now,
but I will speak what comes to my mind.
"They too are wanderers, like the Zaparos; but in no other way are they
like those sluggish ones, and even in their wanderings they differ.
Instead of miserable palm-leaf shelters separated one from another, they
build at chosen places two or three strong houses of logs standing on
end, each house holding fifty or more people, and a tower for use in
fighting enemies who attack them. When they move to another place all go
together; and they move every few months, no matter how good the place
where they are. It is in their blood, señores: they can no more live
years in one spot than a tigre can make himself a house cat.
"Often they move back to some other place where they have been before
and where their old houses wait, but it is not always so. Many times
they go on and build new fortresses and plant new crops. And when the
drive to go becomes too strong to be satisfied by this moving about,
they strike out in fierce raids far from their old homes, killing all
men who block their way.
"They fight with the poisoned arrow, the spear, the club, and sometimes
with ax and knife and gun. In time of peace they trade rubber and gold
for steel weapons--at Macás and Canélos and Loja--but they are so often
at war that they cannot keep themselves in ammunition; so they do not
depend much on their guns. And one of the big tribes of the Jiveros--the
Huambisas of the Santiago--will seldom trade with the whites, so they
have no guns, except those taken from white men killed while hunting
gold in their region. But they need none. Their own weapons are more
than enough."
"Yeah," nodded Tim. "Specially that there poison that kills ye if the
arrer only scratches ye, but leaves ye fit to eat. I s'pose these guys
barbecue the rest of ye after they git yer head off, hey?"
"No," José smiled. "They are not cannibals. All they do to you after you
are dead is to shrink your head, and perhaps braid your hair into a belt
made from the hair of other slain men. The Jivero who kills you, amigo,
will surely put your red hair into his girdle. It will shine brightly
among the black strands."
"Yeah? Well, feller, unless he gits me from behind he'll sure have a
two-handed job givin' me that hair cut. What kind o' lookin' guys are
they? Reg'lar tough mugs, prob'ly, that smell out loud."
"But no, amigo. They are most clean, and take much care of themselves.
They bathe often, and whatever thing they get from a white man they wash
at once. The one thing of which they have fear is disease, for many of
their people have died of smallpox and measles and other ills caught
while trading at towns; so they are suspicious of all things belonging
to strangers until washed.
"Many of them are light of skin and have beards, with faces like those
of Spaniards burned by sun. It may even be that some Spanish blood is in
the veins of such men. I have heard that long ago--three hundred years
or more--the Jiveros and the Spaniards fought a bitter war in which the
white men were swept out of this land, and the wives of those Spaniards
had to become the women of the Indian conquerors. If that be true, the
Spanish children born to those women after capture would grow up as
Jiveros. It may be so--I know not. But I do know this: that up this very
Tigre Yacu are white Indians!
"The Yámeos, they are. White Indians who are restless rovers; they even
cross the great Marañon and journey hundreds of miles southward up the
Ucayali. Little is known of them. But it is known that they are white."
"Maybe more will be known about them when we come out," commented Rand.
"Sí--when we come out. Many things may be known about this river--when
we come out. But before coming out we must go in. Yes? No?"
There was a short pause. Captain McKay's keen gray gaze plumbed each
face. Then he perfunctorily suggested: "Contrary-minded, vote no."
Instead, his three mates nodded. José smiled.
"It seems that I am to have company," he observed.
"Seems like this game has swapped ends," Tim grinned. "Li'l while ago we
thought we was electin' ye: now ye're adoptin' us. Wal, let's go."
"Not so fast," José demurred. "There must be a new boat. And fewer men."
"Correct," approved McKay. "Boat's too big. Indians won't go up here.
Got to shake them and paddle our own canoe. But can we get a smaller
craft?"
"I think so, capitán. Just below here is a small settlement, San Regis.
It is not much--a few huts on the bank, that is all--but canoes are
there. No doubt you can make a trade. But--no word of where we go,
comrades."
"Sure," agreed Knowlton. "This little cruise is strictly private. All
aboard for San Regis, then. Popero!"
In answer to the summons, the steersman arose from the group of Indians
still clustered around the cooking pot. His mates, facing aft, watched
and listened. Sullen dread lest they be commanded to go farther up the
Tigre Yacu was stamped plain on their faces.
"Abajo. Downstream," McKay ordered.
The face of the popero lit up. The sulky expressions of the paddlers
vanished. With monkeylike agility the steersman swung himself atop the
cabin roof. Eagerly the others turned to haul up the crude anchor. When
its wet bulk glistened again in the bow they scrambled to their places
in haste to be gone.
"I think, amigos, I will await you here," said José, as the big craft
began to surge around. "If you will land me----"
"Hitch your canoe astern," Knowlton interposed. "We'll all get plenty of
paddling soon. Take it easy while you can."
"Ah, yes. But it may be as well for you if I am not seen with you. I am
not well known up here, more than three hundred miles above the Javary,
but a bad name travels far."
"Rot!" snapped McKay. "You're our partner. That's enough. Unless, of
course, you'd rather not run the risk----"
"Ho! Risk? José Martinez skulks from no town, capitán! Who would
imprison me must first take me."
His fierce mustache bristled, and his right hand tapped the hilt of a
knife under his waistband. McKay nodded shortly.
"Then you ride here," was his curt answer.
A word to the steersman, and the garretea swung shoreward. Tim, grabbing
a length of fiber cord, clambered to the extreme stern. While every
Indian eye anxiously searched the grass and the trees, the big boat
halted at the bank long enough to allow the taking in tow of the
Peruvian's canoe. Then it sheered off and slid away toward the yellow
water below.
CHAPTER IV
THE POWER OF GOLD
Out into the turbid flood of the continental stream plowed the long
boat. There the paddlers settled themselves for their regular
long-distance stroke. Hardly had they begun to sweat, however, when
their tall captain ordered them to swerve toward a cleared space on the
high left bank, where the peaked roofs of a few dingy clay houses showed
against the encompassing wall of the jungle.
Bewilderment showed in their brown faces as they glanced back toward the
cabin, but they obeyed without hesitation. Once more on the broad
Marañon, with the demon water of the Tigre left behind, whatever the
white men said was right.
Into a sizable cove below the village they floated. Up ahead, sheltered
by the land from the power of the giant of waters, a number of canoes
lay at the shore; and from them a crude footpath--hardly more than a
gully in the clay--rose to the village. Down that path were coming a
couple of wooden-faced Indians, shirt-less but wearing tattered
breeches; and as the garretea slowed to a stop they also stopped,
staring.
"Umph. We don't git no four-man boat here," declared Tim, after a glance
along the meager stock of canoes.
"A couple of three-man dugouts will do," said Knowlton. "Put two men in
each and split the outfit. There's one three-man boat over yonder. Looks
good, too. Find another and we're fixed."
But finding the other was not so easily done. The others all were too
small--all, that is, except one hulking craft at the end of the line,
which bore a striking resemblance in size and shape to the garretea of
the adventurers. At this José scowled.
"We come at a bad time," he muttered. "Traders are here. Ho, Indies!
Whose boat is that?"
The staring pair on the footpath did not answer. One mumbled growlingly
to the other, and they resumed their downward way, turning, at the
bottom, toward the long boat.
"Sangre de Cristo!" snarled the Peruvian, his eyes snapping. "Put me
ashore! I will put tongues in the heads of the surly dogs!"
McKay, unspeaking, motioned shoreward. The popero grunted, and the
paddlers sank their blades.
"Go easy, José," Knowlton cautioned. "We come here to trade, not to
fight."
"Es verdad. But let those Indians escape with their insolence, and what
trade should we make?"
Without awaiting a reply, he made a flying leap to the stern of a dugout
near at hand; landed cat-footed, and in three more bounds was ashore.
Fierce face shoved forward, red kerchief flaring sinister in the sun, he
strode at the two Indians.
One of them, cowed by the truculence of the outlaw's eye, gave back. The
other stood his ground and dropped a hand to the hilt of a machete. The
menace of his attitude was plain. But José did not honor him by drawing
his own steel.
His open hand shot out, the heel of it smacking sharply on the coppery
jaw. The Indian went down as if slugged by a clenched fist.
"Whose boat is that?" rasped the son of the Conquistadores.
The second Indian, cringing, answered promptly this time.
"Maldonado, from Moyobamba, señor."
"Moyobamba!" José spat the name as if it were a curse. "You are his man?
Why in ten devils did you not answer when I called? Where is that
accursed Moyobambino master of yours?"
The man retreated another step, blinking with fear, and pointed a hand
up the bank.
"So. He shall soon see me. And you, you dog--when next a white man
speaks to you, answer at once and civilly. If you do not----Ho! you on
the ground, who said you could get up? Down, you misborn whelp!"
With which he lifted one bare foot, jammed it into the face of the
rising man, and slammed him down again. Whereafter he gave him a
tongue-lashing lurid with oaths and picturesque threats, the last of
which was that if he moved before he was whistled to he would have his
entrails cut out and tied around his neck. With a final glare at both of
them, José spun about and stalked back to the Americans, who now had
landed.
"Their master is a sneaking Moyobambino trader, one Maldonado," he
announced. "If you know not the Moyobambinos, learn now that they are
cheating, lying, thieving dogs, known from Lima to Para for their
rascally tricks. Their one thought is money. If one of them heard that a
dead man with three pesetas in his pocket lay on the shore, he would not
rest until he had smelled out the corpse and torn the money from it.
Such is the Moyobambino."
"Seems to me I've heard of those fellows," said Knowlton. "They're
called 'the Jews of the Andes.'"
"Just so, teniente. And the name is a compliment to them and an insult
to the Jews. A Jew can sometimes be trusted--a Moyobambino never.
"One of the worst massacres on this Marañon was caused by one of those
curs. It was at Santa Teresa, between the rivers Santiago and Morona--a
town which exists no more.
"A party of bold young men from the Rio Mayo determined to seek gold on
the Santiago, though that is the country of the fierce Huambisas. They
started up the Marañon to carry out their plan. But there was a dirty
dog of a Moyobambino trader, one Canuto Acosta, to whom some of the
Santa Teresans owed a little gold dust; and he was worried lest the
coming of the gold hunters might spoil his chance of collecting his
paltry debt. So he scurried up the river ahead of them and reached the
little town just as a big party of Huambisas came in from the Santiago
to trade.
"To these bloody savages he said that a great army of white men was
coming up the river to crush their tribe and make them slaves. The
Huambisas at once killed every man in the town--forty and seven of
them--and carried away sixty women as their slaves. They left alive only
two boys, whom they put on a raft and sent down the river to tell the
gold-hunters they would kill them also if they came on. So, señores, one
hundred and seven people went to death or misery because of one lying
Moyobambino."
"Huh! And I s'pose the mutt that done it got away with a whole hide,"
growled Tim.
"No. He was the first man killed."
"Yeah? Good!"
"Good indeed, comrade. If only the Huambisas had stopped with killing
him--but that is not their way. Nor is it the way of Moyobambinos to
let other men get money if they also can smell it. What that Acosta did,
this Maldonado would do if he suspected where we go and why. He would
try to betray us in some way, if only to keep us from finding treasure
he could not have. Capitán, if the misbegotten cur seeks to know our
business, let me handle him."
McKay's set lips twitched slightly.
"He's your meat," he agreed. "I'll handle the trade, though. Tim, stick
here on guard."
"Right, cap." The red-haired man swung his left hand carelessly to his
gun barrel in rifle salute. "Whistle to yer dog, Hozy. He's gittin'
restless."
José, glancing back at the forgotten Indian whom he had downed, chuckled
harshly as he found the man still on the ground. He gave a sharp whistle
and lifted a finger. The Indian lurched to his feet and slunk away
toward the farther end of his master's boat.
Up the slope clambered the four, each carrying his rifle. Tim got back
on board and leaned against the cabin, where he could watch everything
without effort. The crew lounged at ease, incurious, unaware that their
voyage down the river was likely to end here. The two men of the
Moyobambino effaced themselves by entering their own craft and squatting
in the bow.
At the top of the bank the northerners threw one glance around the
weedy, slovenly little village, wrinkled their noses at the odor of
decaying offal, and headed for a damp-looking mud-walled house around
which clustered a knot of sluggish men and frowsy women--Indians and
mestizos. A boy, spying the approach of the newcomers, let out a shrill
yell. The adults turned with a suddenness that sent a small cloud of
flies buzzing up off their unclean skins.
"Estranjeros!" shrieked a number of the women. Then, perceiving that
these strangers were white señores, they began simpering with affected
shyness and furtively attempted to pat their hair into something
approaching tidiness. The men simply stood and gaped.
With the aggressive stride of the dominant race, the four tramped
straight up to the mongrel pack before speaking. The townspeople,
scanning the bleak face of McKay, and meeting the hard eye of José,
involuntarily shrank together, presenting a compact front.
"Buenas tardes, amigos," spoke McKay. "Where is your head man?"
"Within, señor," answered a fat, pompous-looking mestizo. "The Jefe
Pablo Arredondo. But he is engaged in affairs of business."
"So. We bring him further affairs. Have the goodness to step aside."
"But the Señor Torribio Maldonado----" began the important one.
"Can step aside also," McKay broke in. "We have haste."
"And we dislike the smell of your flyblown town too much to wait," José
added with a hard grin.
The fat yellow man swelled as if mortally insulted. Then, catching the
glimmer under the black brows of the outlaw, he suddenly began laughing
in a scared way and backed a step.
"Enter, amigos!" he squeaked. "Ha, ha, ha! A rich joke! He, he, he!"
With a contemptuous glance José forthwith began shouldering his arrogant
way through to the door. The three northerners, with less violence but
no less firmness, pressed the townsmen aside and forced a path which
otherwise might not have opened to them for an hour. A moment later they
were inside the musty house.
The "affairs of business" were in plain sight on a rickety table. They
comprised the contents of a large bottle, which the Señor Torribio
Maldonado and the civic authority evidently had already discussed to
some extent; for the bottle was far from full, while the head man showed
slight signs of being on the way to becoming so. His greasy face was
heavy with liquor and displeasure at being disturbed. One direct look at
him told the newcomers that trading might be a protracted affair
involving much patience and diplomacy--unless a shrewd stroke could be
delivered at the outset. McKay instantly decided on the nature of that
stroke.
But first he and his companions studied the other man, whose predatory
face hung over the table like that of a vulture. Hook-beaked,
slit-mouthed, beady-eyed, scrawny of neck and humpy of shoulder, with
one skinny hand lying like a curved talon on the table--there was no
need to ask if he was a Moyobambino. Already his cunning eyes were
agleam with speculation as to whether he could make anything out of
these travelers.
McKay turned his gaze back to the frowning visage of the big man of the
village. Without speaking, he casually drew from a pocket a gold coin
and flipped it whirling into the air. In a shaft of sunlight shining in
at a small side window the spinning gold flashed yellow darts at the two
men beyond the table. Into the sodden face of Arredondo leaped an
answering flash of life.
Gold! Gold money! Here where money was so scarce that canoemen were paid
with stingy yards of cloth and business was done by primitive barter,
where a paltry peseta was something to be proudly exhibited and a silver
sol was to be hoarded--gold money, tossed carelessly into the air! The
glittering rise and fall of that coin accomplished more than half an
hour of patient talk would have done. Hardly had it thudded softly back
into McKay's palm when the greasy one was leaning forward, his loose
lips writhing in an ingratiating grimace. The Moyobambino--his hand had
clenched like the claws of a swooping hawk.
"Señores!" gurgled Jefe Pablo. "What is your pleasure?"
"Canoes," laconically answered the captain, closing his hand but
allowing the rim of the yellow disk to peep out between his fingers.
"Two three-man canoes. For them we will trade a fine large garretea."
"A garretea!" The other's face fell. "What should we of San Regis do
with so big a boat? And two canoes of that sort--_no hay_."
"There is one in the port," disputed McKay. "Think hard, my friend.
There must be another."
"_No hay_," was the doleful answer.
Then the Señor Torribio Maldonado intruded himself.
"Amigo mio--querido amigo mio," he began.
"Liar!" spat José. "No man is your 'dear friend.' No man wishes to be.
Hold your tongue!"
The man of Moyobamba, after one look, obeyed. Meanwhile McKay took
another tack.
"Then we must keep our garretea. Also we keep our gold. If there were
canoes--but there are none. Good day."
Dropping the coin back into a pocket, he turned doorward.
"Wait!" blurted the pride of San Regis. "If there were canoes, you
would buy them--with gold?"
"Yes. But--_no hay_." McKay took a step outward.
"Señor! Have the goodness to wait--one little moment. One canoe there
is, sí. And----"
"That canoe is mine, Pablo!" yelled Maldonado. "Before these strangers
came you agreed to let me have it, and also to give me a new crew for my
big boat----"
"----And now it comes to my mind that there is another," pursued the
greasy one, ignoring the trader. "I had forgotten--it is just
finished--it will be put into the water immediately, caballero mio!
Mariano--Juan--Mauricio--you others! Put beside the garretea of these
gentlemen the new canoe! At once!"
"But it is mine--they are mine!" screeched the Moyobambino. "I will sell
them to you, señores----"
"You have not paid for them," Arredondo harshly retorted. "So they are
not yours. Señor--Capitán--that is real gold in your hand? You will give
it me now? How much?"
"Twenty gold dollars of the United States of America," McKay solemnly
answered, opening his hand halfway. "Gold. Gold of the finest. You shall
have it when we have the canoes."
"Santo Domingo! San Pedro! Madre de Dios! The canoes are mine!" roared
Maldonado. "He has no right to sell them. Give the gold to me!"
José burst into a roar of mirth. The others grinned.
"Oho-ho-ho!" yelped the outlaw. "A Moyobambino beaten in a trade! Twenty
golden dollars, Torribio, which go not into your claws! Yah-hah-ha! It
is too good!"
The trader, beside himself, sprang up, knocking over the flimsy table.
Like a flash José's face froze.
"Sit, señor!" he said softly, a sinister sibilance in his tone. For one
instant the other glared--for one instant only. Then, his face that of a
man who had just looked Death in the eye, he slowly, very carefully,
sank back. He still sat there when the adventurers and the
greedy-mouthed Arredondo had passed outside.
But, a little later, when the two new canoes were hitched to the
garretea and all San Regis stood clustered on the bank, the man of
Moyobamba appeared and bent a long look on the gold-piece now reposing
in the dirty palm of the double-dealing Pablo, who gloated down at its
yellow luster as if hypnotized. Then his sly glance lifted to Pablo's
fascinated face, and he grinned a cunning grin.
To the white men out on the water, already outward bound, he yelled
boldly: "Where do you go with all those boats?"
Rand, lounging against the cabin, spoke his first words since leaving
the Tigre Yacu.
"To the devil!" he snapped.
"A quick voyage to you!" came the jeering retort.
"Faith," muttered Tim Ryan, "mebbe ye spoke a true word, feller, at
that."
CHAPTER V
EYES IN THE BUSH
Gripped again by the current of the Marañon, the long river boat and its
trio of canoes floated downstream. It traveled slowly, however, for
McKay had ordered the paddlers to rest. Meanwhile a council of war
proceeded in the cabin.
"We have to get rid of this garretea and its crew," stated McKay. "May
as well drift until we figure out how. It won't take us long to go back
upstream, and it's as well to get away from San Regis and that snooping
trader. Now what'll we do with this cumbersome craft?"
Frowns of thought ensued. The big boat had become a veritable elephant
on their hands. It was José who suggested a solution of the problem.
"Perhaps this may do, capitán. Send boat and crew to Iquitos, and with
them a note to a man I know, telling him to pay off the crew and hold
the boat for us. I have a friend there--oh yes, even an outlaw has
friends--who will do this if I write the letter. The boat is worth as
much as the wages of the paddlers, is it not so? Then he will lose
nothing if we never come to get it.
"Promise the Indians more pay if they reach there by a certain time, and
they will travel fast enough to keep ahead of that spying Maldonado, who
surely would question them if he overtook them. Still, perhaps he
travels up, not down. I wish I knew what is in his garretea."
"I can tell ye that," volunteered Tim. "I got tired standin' on board,
so I rambled over and peeked at his cargo. It's heavy stuff--copper
kittles and hardware and crockery----"
"Ah! Está bien! He goes upstream. If he were down bound he would be
carrying straw hats, sarsaparilla, sugar, and such things, for the
down-river trade. Then we need not care how much time these paddlers
take. Only give them the letter, explain to the popero, and let them go.
Is the plan good, capitán?"
"Why not pay 'em off ourselves?" Rand demurred. "We've got lots of
trade-cloth----"
"If you pay them they will go straight back home as soon as we are out
of sight," José interrupted. "Let us make a good start up the Tigre Yacu
before anyone learns of our journey. Not that many will dare to follow,
but----"
"José has the right idea," clipped McKay. "That looks like a good cove
over yonder. May as well transfer our stuff there. Popero! Adentro!
Inland, over yonder!"
The puzzled steersman obediently swung his rudder and growled at the
paddlers. The flotilla veered, plowed into a gap in the bank, bumped to
a stop against the shore. At once began the work of transshipment.
The paddlers, much mystified, found themselves stowing in the two newly
acquired canoes the sealed kerosene tins--which held not oil but reserve
rations, cartridges, and such necessities, soldered tight to keep out
moisture and thievish hands--and other paraphernalia of their patrones.
Meanwhile the Peruvian, equipped with paper and pencil by Knowlton,
laboriously composed a brief note which he signed, not with name or
initials, but with an undecipherable symbol. When it was done he laughed
in derision.
"Look at the miserable scrawl!" he jeered. "When I was a little boy
in--a certain town beyond the mountains--I wrote such a hand that the
padre used to pat my head. And now--caramba! one would think this note
was written with a machete instead of a pencil. Years of the paddle and
the gun have destroyed the writing trick. I move the whole arm to make
one tiny letter."
"Ain't it the truth?" sympathized Tim. "Me, I never was no hand to
write, but till I went to France I could git off some kind of a letter
to me girl without tearin' me shirt. Then after I got used to heavin'
Fritzies around with me bay'nit I couldn't sling a pen at all, at all.
I'd git cramps. So I jest wrote, 'Wait till I git home, kid, and I'll
tell ye all about it. So no more from yours truly.' And I let it go at
that."
"And what did the girl say, amigo?" laughed José.
"Aw, she gimme a long-distance bawlin' out and then married a guy that
was makin' a million a week in a shipyard. I got me another girl toot
sweet--one o' them pretty li'l frogs--and saved a lot o' wear and tear
on me wrist, to say nothin' o' paper and ink. Hey there, ye wall-eyed
Settin' Bull, where ye puttin' that bag? Over there--por allí--allá--oo
la la--aw, talk to him, Hozy! I git me French and Spinach mixed when I
want to talk fast."
José, chuckling, set the bewildered Indian right with three sharp words
and a gesture, and thereafter aided in speeding up the shifting of the
equipment. The coppery crew, who knew they would not be kicked or struck
by the North Americans, were taking their time in all they did; but when
they heard the Spaniard's crackling oaths and found him looming over
them in apparent eagerness to decapitate any man who dawdled, they
jumped. Under the lash of his tongue they finished the job in half time.
Then, after a final inspection of the garretea to make sure nothing was
forgotten, McKay told the men that their ways parted here. Carefully,
patiently, he explained just what they were to do, until it was evident
that it was understood. The letter he gave to the popero, who took it
gingerly and turned it over and over. Then he glanced along the huddle
of Indian faces, which stared glumly back at him as if their owners
wondered if they were not the victims of some white-man treachery.
"José, you're sure these chaps will be paid in full at Iquitos?" he
demanded.
"I am positive, capitán," the Peruvian answered earnestly. "I know that
man as I know my right hand, and he will do as I have written. He will
pay them their just wage and get them places on some up-bound boat. They
will have no trouble in receiving what is due or in returning home."
The captain nodded. In direct, curt, but kindly phrases he pledged them
his word that no trick was being put upon them, and that the paper in
the hands of the popero would bring them the full reward for their toil.
The sooner they reached Iquitos, he pointed out, the sooner they would
be paid; they had best not dally on the way, and above all they must not
lose the paper or allow anyone to turn them aside from their journey.
For a moment they stared back at him, searching his face. Then they
stirred and muttered their belief in his words.
"We leave with you," McKay added, smiling a little, "to help you on your
way, a little aguardiente. It is here in the cabin. Adios."
The glum faces lit up. Teeth gleamed in joyous grins, and as the captain
went over the side they scrambled into the cabin to drink his parting
gift.
"Nothing like it to send them away happy," laughed Knowlton, who had
suggested the idea of leaving the raw liquor. "Poor fellows, they get
little enough pleasure."
And as the three canoes slid out into the river they all looked back and
tossed their paddles in response to the shouts of the sons of the
western mountains: "Hasta luego, señores! Good-by for a while!"
They were the last cheery words the five were to hear, except from one
another, for many a long day.
Into the glare of the westering sun surged the canoes, driven by the
powerful strokes of fresh muscles and by the impetus of a new quest. The
twin dugouts, built for three men each, held two pairs: McKay and
Knowlton in the one, Rand and Tim in the other. José, alone in his
smaller craft, slipped along with the careless ease of a tireless
machine. Before long, he knew, his four mates would become conscious of
hot palms and fatigued shoulders; for weeks of traveling in the
confinement of a garretea give men scant chance to keep fit. But he said
no word.
San Regis drew near, crept past, and fell away behind without sign that
the passage of the little fleet had been observed. Evidently the
population of the town was again clustered at the door of the great man
Arredondo, listening to every word uttered and watching the progress of
their Moyobamba visitor's campaign to get possession of the American
double-eagle. The adventurers, remembering the cunning gaze of the
trader at the gold-dazed Pablo, had not the slightest doubt that before
morning the up-river man would have that coin in his greasy pouch. But
that was a matter for Pablo to worry about. They had their canoes--stout
boats worth double the price paid--and were on their way.
Soon the one-man canoe drew a little ahead and swung inward. It curved
athwart the eddying shore current and glided into the bank, out of
sight. The others, following close, slowed beside it and came to a
pause. Once more clear water flowed around them. Behind rolled the
Marañon. Ahead opened the Tigre.
For a moment, holding their boats steady with slow strokes, the five men
gazed around. One last look they took at the tremendous river marching
onward in savage power through the wilderness--a grim monster which,
even though it now rested between the periods of its engulfing floods,
gnawed ceaselessly at its jungle walls and from time to time brought
miles of tree-laden shore tumbling down into its insatiable maw; which,
already a thousand miles away from its birthplace in little Lake
Lauricocha, would sweep on eastward for three thousand miles farther,
growing more and more vast, until it hurled its yellow tide two hundred
miles out into the Atlantic Ocean; a sullen serpent of waters,
malignant, merciless, untamable as the colossal mountains whence it
sprang.
Yet the level-eyed voyagers in the hollowed-out log boats gave the
monster only the casual look of men who cared no whit for its power. It
was the smaller stream that held their searching gaze--the frank, clear
water which seemed to hold no evil thing in its limpid depths, yet which
lured bold hearts into a dim land of sorcery and there swallowed them
utterly or flung them back scarred, mutilated, and mad; the flowing road
to mountains of golden treasure, but a road beleaguered by ferocious
beasts and by man-demons who belted themselves with human hair and
shrunk human heads into leering dolls.
"Once upon a time," said blue-eyed Knowlton, "when I was a little kid, I
used to read fairy tales and Arabian Nights yarns about caves where
dragons would come out and shoot fire from their noses and broil
wayfarers to death; and about ogres who trapped travelers into their
castles and stewed them for supper, and one-eyed giants who picked men
up by the feet and bit their heads off, and so on. And when I went to
bed and the room was dark I could see those things standing in the black
corners and glowering at me. Gee, I used to sweat blood!
"Then when I grew older I sneered at myself for ever believing such
things. But lately I'm not so sure that I sneered rightly. There isn't
much choice, after all, between a fiery dragon and a tiger that tears
out your throat, or between a fellow who bites off your head and one who
cuts it off and keeps it so that he can spit in your face whenever he
feels grouchy."
"Getting cold feet?" smiled McKay, who more than once had seen the
former lieutenant plunge recklessly into an inferno of blood and flame
among the shell-torn trenches of the Hindenburg line.
"Uh-huh. Numb from the knees down. But, on the level, I'm beginning to
wonder if we're not a lot of jackasses to go in here. Seems as if those
San Regis bums would have some gold if this river of theirs was
gold-bearing."
José spat.
"Bah! Those sons of sloths? If the ground beneath their miserable hovels
were full of gold, teniente, they would not have enough ambition to dig
it up. And to go up this stream seeking it--not they! They lock
themselves into their houses at night for fear of the tigres."
Rand nodded.
"Same way over in the Andes," he said. "Indians, poor as dirt, shivering
and lousy, living on top of millions in gold and silver and never
digging down to it. Takes a white man to hunt treasure. What's biting
you, Tim?"
Tim, who had been twitching his shoulders as if to dislodge something,
now lifted a hand and scratched.
"Nothin'--yet. Mebbe it's only me imagination, but I been feelin' crawly
since we left that there town. Them folks ain't human. I bet the only
time they git a bath is when they git caught in the rain. And--talkin'
about dirt, did ye pipe the bare-naked kid _eatin'_ it?"
All shook their heads. But José smiled understandingly.
"'Tis so. He was clawin' up hunks o' clay and chewin' 'em--I seen him
swaller the stuff!"
"That is nothing new," José said calmly. "Children who are eaters of
dirt are common enough in this country west of the Napo, and east of it,
too. But unless we are to go back to San Regis, let us move now and find
a place to make camp to-night. The sun swings low."
"Right ye are. Let's go. I'll fight all the head-hunters this side o'
Heligoland before I'll go back to that dump."
The water swirled behind the paddles and creamed away from the prows.
Three abreast, the canoes surged away up the River of Tigers. They
passed the spot where the dead ashes of the Peruvian's noonday fire lay
hidden in the grass, and where the mud still held the broad tracks of a
cat creature which long before now had been torn asunder by down-river
crocodiles. On they swept, gradually growing smaller, until at length
they slid out of sight around a turn.
Then, at the edge of the thick growth above the point where they had
paused, a man moved. Across his flat, coppery face, expressionless as
that of a crude idol, passed a flicker of hatred. One dirty paw, resting
on the hilt of a machete dangling down his ragged breeches, tightened as
if around the throat of a Spaniard. Beady eyes glancing warily around
him, he began silently working his way eastward, down the bank of the
Marañon.
He was the Indian whom José had knocked flat on the shore of the port of
San Regis. And he was on his way back to the town where waited his
master, the Señor Torribio Maldonado.
CHAPTER VI
IN THE PATH OF THE STORM
Between two hundred-foot walls of vivid verdure, starred softly by
delicately tinted orchids and tipped by yellowish bud-flowers of palms,
the Tigre Yacu shone like polished silver, unruffled by the faintest
breath of air. On its placid bosom were mirrored great flowering ferns,
fifty feet tall; curving stems and drooping fronds of the giant of
grasses, the bamboo; the high-reaching branches of the _jagua_, the
enormous plumes of the _jupati_, the feather-bunch crown of the
_ubussu_, the white trunk and flat top of the lordly silk-cotton, and
the looping, twining, dangling network of aërial vines.
Even the emerald gleam of the huge green tree-beetles, shining like
jewels in the glare of the westering sun, was reflected from the
flawless surface of the river of the evil name. Over it wheeled and
floated clouds of gorgeous blue and yellow butterflies. Across it winged
flocks of green parrots, and along it hopped and yelped huge-beaked
toucans gaudy in feather dresses of flaring yellow, orange, and red.
A captivating, alluring river it seemed, beckoning the wanderer on into
an Elysium where no evil could wait and where stingless bees would pour
their honey into his bowl. But to those wanderers who even now were
stroking up into its luxuriance and furrowing its smooth surface into
uneasy ripples it was not the Eden it looked. Every man of the five was
tormented by scores of red-hot needles.
Though their distance from shore might protect them from savage man or
beast, it only made them easier prey to the tiny torturers whose
ferocity has for centuries aided the head-hunting barbarians to keep the
tributaries of the Marañon almost uninhabited by white men: the
blood-thirsty zancudos, the almost invisible piums, the big black
montuca flies whose lancets bore so big a hole in the flesh that blood
drips long after the bite. Out on the broad Marañon itself, where the
east winds swept strong and steady across all floating craft, the North
Americans had suffered little from such pests. But now, well up the
Tiger River, they had long since lost that wind; and the exposed skin of
every man was blackened with the minute scars of the piums and scabbed
with the wounds of the montucas. And, with merciless persistence, fresh
hordes kept swarming to the attack.
Yet, in days of dogged journeying, they had suffered nothing except this
constant bloodletting. Not once had human foes appeared. Not once had
any animal or snake assailed them--though each night the roar of more
than one tigre had sounded too close to camp for comfortable rest, and
from time to time during the day as well there came from the maze of
shore growth the menacing note of some jungle king voicing his
resentment at the invasion of his domain. They received no response to
their challenge, those fierce animals: for Captain McKay had issued
strict orders to ignore them.
"Let them alone unless they attack," he commanded. "We're here for
something more important than cat shooting, and the less noise we make
the better. No firing unless necessary."
So, except for the volley which had blown the head off the big black cat
at the Marañon, neither the high-powered bolt-action rifles of the
Americans nor the big-bored repeater of José had spoken since the
five-cornered partnership had been formed. Hunting was done at the end
of each day's traverse, but only with a light .22-caliber table gun,
which made little more noise than a breaking stick, and with bow and
arrow, which killed in silence.
The archer of the company was the taciturn, green-eyed Rand. For five
years, before being found and rehabilitated by the three former soldiers
who now were his comrades, he had been a wild creature of the jungle;
and grim necessity had made him as expert in the construction and use of
bow and arrows as any of the savages among whom he lived. Moreover, it
had given him the keen hunting instinct and the instantaneous perception
of the presence of animal life to which no civilized white man can
attain without living long amid primeval surroundings. And now, though
no longer a "wild dog," he had not lost either his hunting-animal
sensitiveness or his deadly skill with the weapon of primitive man.
In fact, his markmanship with the bow was much better than with the
rifle. Though he had equipped himself in the States with the same type
of rifle and pistol favored by the ex-army men, and had made himself
thoroughly familiar with their use, he still was only a fair shot. In
comparison with the shooting of his companions, his was not even fair.
To both McKay and Knowlton belonged the little silver medal with crossed
rifles which the United States Army bestows only on its crack shots.
Tim, ex-sergeant, had won the sharpshooter's cross--and, in his
open-handed way, given it to the girl who later married the shipyard
worker. José, veteran jungle ranger, was deadly with either rifle or
machete. In such company Rand was low gun.
Whether because of a natural dislike to feeling himself inferior to his
comrades, or because of an atavistic urge to return to the barbaric
implement of death after returning to the primordial land east of the
Andes, on his way down the big river he had quietly built for himself a
new bow, with a quiver and a goodly supply of arrows--five-foot shafts
made from straight cane and tipped with barbed tail-bones of the swamp
sting-ray. Equipped with these and minus his boots--which, despite the
ever-present danger of snake bite, he refused to wear while hunting--he
now would slip away into the bush late each day, silent and deadly as
any prowling beast of the forest. With him, carrying the little .22
rifle, went--not José, the other bush-trained hunter of the party, but
Knowlton. While they were out José and the other two would make camp for
the night. And before the sun slid down behind the distant Andes and
night whelmed the forest the absent pair always returned with ample
meat.
José, who, under normal conditions, should have been one of the hunters,
remained at the river bank from choice; the choice being due to the fact
that he was not allowed to shoot his own heavy gun. On trying to snap
the light, short, low-power rifle to his shoulder and catch the sights
quickly he found himself, as he said, "all thumbs." After a few vain
efforts to accustom himself to it he handed it back with a rueful grin.
"With a man's gun, amigos, with that old iron bar of mine, I can shoot,"
he said. "But with this toy rifle--this little boy's plaything--no. And
these tiny bullets--por Dios, they feel like fleas in my hand! If I shot
a monkey with one of them I should feel that I had insulted him."
So it was Knowlton, who had amused himself many a time by popping the
little gun at crocodiles' eyes during the long days of drifting, who
followed Rand on the stealthy pot-hunting trips. Despite his comparative
inexperience at jungle travel afoot, he could step quietly and spy game
quickly, and he could shoot like a flash. With Rand as his guide he had
no difficulty in getting about, and now and then he knocked over some
bird or small animal in places where his partner's long bow was at a
disadvantage. Thus the pair formed a very efficient team.
Now another day was nearing its end. A sweltering day, it had been; a
breathless, cloudless day on which the vindictive assaults of the insect
hordes seemed to have been redoubled. Ceaselessly they hunted skin spots
not already hardened and scabbed by the bites of their predecessors;
they burrowed into beards and shaggy hair, they crawled into noses and
ears, they sneaked inside shirts and strove to dig under the sweatbands
of the hats. The paddlers, smeared with clay which they had applied in
the vain hope of defending their tortured skins, grinned and bore it;
grinned not with mirth or contempt, but with the fixed facial
contraction of acute discomfort which must be endured. Tight-mouthed,
slit-eyed, their faces were masks of unbreakable determination. Their
shoulders swung with regular unbroken sway, and the paddles rose and
fell as if moved by machines driven by inexorable will. Bugs might come
and bugs might go, but it seemed that the three boats would surge on
with never a halt to the journey's end.
But the eyes under those slits were scanning the shores, which now were
closer together than back at the Marañon, and from time to time the
heads turned in a brief look at some possible camp-site. It was nearing
the hour when the voyagers must land, hunt, throw up pole-and-palm
shelters, sling hammocks, eat, and seek badly needed refuge from their
tormentors inside the drab insect bars. And in his stubborn heart every
man was glad of it.
With a wordless grunt José veered out of line toward the left shore. The
twin dugouts followed. Into a shadowy creek between small bluffs they
went. Within the entrance thick brush flanked them like impenetrable
walls. But a few rods farther upstream José drew up to shore and paused.
There the tangle was thinner, and the Peruvian pointed to an arm-thick
sindicaspi tree.
"Will do," granted McKay, speaking through lips swollen by bites. The
pair of San Regis dugouts drew up, and their paddlers rose stiffly and
stepped ashore.
A moment of wary looking around--then José slashed his machete with
whirling deftness through the nearest bush stalks, clearing a small
space. The travelers pulled from their canoes dry clothing and large
gourds, and, with such speed as their tired muscles allowed, they
stripped. Insects swooped exultantly at the bared skins. But the pests
had hardly alighted when they were swept away by the gourdfuls of water
with which their victims deluged themselves from hair to heels. A
copious drenching, a swift rubdown, a hurried donning of dry garments,
and the five stood reinvigorated. With one accord they produced tobacco
and papers and rolled cigarettes.
"Got firewood, anyways," remarked Tim, eying the sindicaspi tree and
luxuriously blowing smoke into the cloud of bugs around him. "Better git
busy and make camp. Bet ye we have another crackin' thunderstorm soon.
We didn't git no shower to-day. Same way our first day up--there wasn't
no rain that noon, but we sure caught it that night."
The others nodded. The regular noon rain, usually arriving from the east
as punctually as if turned on by prearranged schedule, had failed to
arrive that day. The air now was oppressively heavy, though nowhere near
so hot as out on the river; in fact, the change in temperature was so
marked in the damp forest shadows that if the travelers had not shed
their sweat-soaked clothing promptly on landing they would have speedily
become chilled.
"The rain must come," José agreed. "The path of the sun is the path of
the storm, as the Indians say. The sun has nearly passed, and the storm
is not far behind."
With which he drew his machete again and renewed his destruction of the
small growth. Tim pulled a half-ax from his canoe and advanced on the
sindicaspi tree--one of the few dependable fuel woods in the humid
forests of the upper Amazon. McKay, with a similar ax, looked about for
material for the corner-posts and ridge-pole of the night refuge. Rand,
who had remained unshod after his bath, got out his big bow, and
Knowlton picked up the scorned but useful little rifle. Every man was at
his job.
With no word of parting, the pair of hunters slipped away into the
woods, working upstream. Oddly mated they seemed, and incongruously
armed: the one stolid-faced as an Indian, black-bearded, hatless,
barefoot, carrying the most archaic missile-throwing weapon known; the
other light of eye and hair, sensitive-mouthed, appearing more like a
dreamer than a man of action, bearing a puny weapon which indeed looked
to be the boy's toy José had called it. Yet they were brothers at
heart--brothers of the long trails and the lawless lands--and each was
equipped to fight the most ferocious beast or man; for strapped to each
right thigh swung a heavy automatic, and down each left leg hung a keen
machete.
For a short distance they stole along in file, eyes searching the
branches, feet subconsciously picking clear going. All at once Rand
stiffened and paused, but only for a moment. Then he moved on. Up from
the creek-side rose a brown bird resembling a pheasant, which whirred
away aloft and vanished among the dense foliage. Knowlton's rifle,
instinctively lifted, sank again. Both men had recognized the
gamy-looking flier as a chansu, whose flesh is so musky that even
Indians refuse to eat it.
Onward they crept, threading the pathless tangle like somber shadows for
perhaps another hundred yards. Then the light increased. Just ahead the
tree-tops thinned, and after a few more stealthy steps the hunters
halted behind trees at the edge of a small lagoon. At once each threw up
his weapon. A few feet beyond, at the edge of the water, were feeding a
splendid pair of huananas--big ducks, armed with small horns on the
wings.
Rand, extending his bow horizontally, loosed point-blank. At the low
twang of the cord both birds jumped and shot out broad wings in the
first beat of flight. But neither rose. With the thrum of the bow
blended the snap of the little rifle. The extended wings fell asprawl,
the reaching necks collapsed, and both birds floated dead on the water.
Exultantly the men started forward to retrieve their game. In that same
moment two things happened. A couple of rods farther on, a bush swayed.
As Rand's quick eye caught the movement, the light suddenly dimmed and
behind them sounded a rising roar like the onrush of a mighty tidal
wave.
For an instant Rand watched the bush. Then, deciding that the movement
was caused by some animal, he glanced up. Overhead loomed black clouds,
hurtling westward at terrific speed. Behind, the roar of the onsweeping
wind culminated in a crash of thunder. Storm was upon them.
Dropping his rifle, Knowlton plunged thigh-deep into the muddy pool and
seized the birds. Rand swept a searching gaze along the shore, seeking
shelter--and found it. Just beyond the spot where the bush had
wagged stood a patriarchal old tree in whose base opened a black hole.
Shouting, the green-eyed man pointed to it, grabbed up the rifle, and
ran. Knowlton, floundering ashore with a duck dangling by the neck from
each fist, raced in his wake.
Another crash--a searing flash of lightning--a smashing deluge of
rain--then Rand reached the hollow tree and plunged into it. In the same
instant Knowlton heard a startled yell and glimpsed something darting
out of the hole: a thing that seemed only a thin, vanishing streak elbow
high from the ground. In mid-stride he dropped both ducks and snatched
his pistol from the holster. Then he hurled himself into the dim
tree-trunk.
Struggling bodies plunged against him and spun him outside again. A
sheet of rain lashed into his face, blinding and choking him. Lightning
flared anew, casting a ghastly greenish glare through the sudden
darkness. By its weird flicker he saw two fighting men reel about in
the blur of falling water, then pitch headlong back into the hole.
Into that hole he leaped again. The light of storm winked out. Dimly he
made out a man tangle at his feet. As he strove to see which was his
partner they heaved over violently, knocking his legs from under him.
His pistol flew from his hand. Falling, he grabbed fiercely at the man
on top.
Then, before he knew whom he had seized, above them sounded a straining,
creaking groan of wood. The ground rose under them. A rending crack--a
rushing sound--a tremendous blow. Then darkness and silence.
CHAPTER VII
THE CLAWS OF THE TIGRE
Night engulfed the jungle in such blackness as only the jungle knows.
The vast sea of tree and bush and vine, by day almost impenetrable but
nevertheless composed of myriads of separate parts, now was a solid
bulk. Far above it the tropic stars shone in a clear sky of deep dark
blue, dropping a faint light which, to such creatures as moved above the
matted roof of branch and leaf, gave form and substance to those things
near at hand. But down below, where shadows lay thick even at noonday,
the gloom now was that of an abyss. Through it could pass only such life
as could dilate its eyes to the rims, the noisome things which have no
eyes and need none, or that unbeatable creature--man--who can carry
light with him.
Yet, among those Stygian shades, life moved. Misshapen ant-bears stalked
slowly about, their gluey tongues drooling out, in search of ant-hills.
Giant cats, hungry and savage, hunted in ugly impatience. And down
beside a little pool on a creek of the Tigre Yacu, a man struggled
dizzily to sit up.
His first conscious impression was that a tigre had snarled. He could
not see that beast, but some primitive instinct, inherited perhaps from
apelike ancestors on whom the terrible saber-toothed tiger had preyed
ages ago, told him it was only a few feet away, at his right. Moved by
the primordial impulse associated with that ancient instinct, he reached
above him for a branch to seize as his first move toward safety in the
upper air. His hand hit solid wood. At the same instant the invisible
brute snarled again.
His head whirled, and he slumped down. For a moment he lay supine,
trying to think. He had been fighting--storm had flashed and
crashed--something had struck him----
Abruptly the menace of the present knocked all thought of the past from
his struggling brain. Hot, fetid breath poured against his bare right
leg. A sniffing sound came to his ears. He yanked the leg back, and just
in time; for great claws hooked into his breeches, scraping the skin.
Heaving himself over, he felt the cloth yield and heard it rip. Then he
caught the malevolent gleam of a big eye.
Tardily, something told him he was armed. His right hand slid to his
thigh, yanked a flat pistol from a holster--and at the same instant the
huge paw reached for him again.
The claws sank with a cruel grip into his flesh. Again glimmered the
eye. He shoved his weapon forward and fired.
_Crash-crash-crash-crash!_ Four shots shattered the night.
The claws bit deeper in a convulsive spasm. Squirming with pain, he
struck at them with his pistol. The barrel hit something hard,
unyielding, and the weapon was nearly knocked from his grip. With an
inarticulate growl he dropped it and attacked the clutching paw with
both hands.
Though it clung to its hold, that paw now was motionless. He tore its
hooks loose and threw it aside. Then he scratched around him in a mad
effort to recover his gun. One hand hit it and closed around it. At once
he lurched up.
A cruel blow on the head downed him. He struck on something softer than
earth, slid down it a little, dropped a hand on it. His dazed brain told
him it was warm human flesh.
Another snarl beyond him! Then a hoarse, harsh roar of rage. Would that
tigre never die? It sounded more malignant, more powerful than ever.
Pistol shoved forward, hair bristling, he settled himself forward on his
knees and awaited attack. He could not see the thing; he must hold his
fire until----
"It was here, amigos. I cannot have it wrong----Hah! What is that?
Sangre de Cristo! The tigre himself!"
The voice struck across the black void with startling suddenness. With
it came light. With both voice and light came a louder snarl from the
unseen beast.
"Yeah! That's him. Let him have it!"
Rifle reports split the air before the second voice ceased: sharp cracks
merging with a blunter shock of exploding gunpowder; two high-velocity
guns and an old-fashioned .44 pouring out a ragged volley. Silence
followed.
After a tense pause the first voice spoke.
"Dead, I think. But it is best to be sure."
The black powder smashed out for a second time. Another pause ensued.
"Sí. Dead, comrades. And now if we can find the one whose gun we
heard----Señores! Knowlton! Rand!"
"Hey, Dave! Looey! For the love o' Mike make a noise!"
The crouching man, who still could not see his rescuers, shouted
hoarsely.
"Here! Come closer! This is Dave!"
Sounds of movement began. The light increased. Rand, peering about,
found himself walled in. The light shone beyond a jagged hole near him,
a scant foot wide.
"Gee, I dunno yet where he's at," came Tim's puzzled tones. "Sounded
right yonder----Huh! Lookit the tree down! He must be under that. Hey,
Dave, old feller! Are ye all right? Where's looey? That bloody tiger
didn't git him, did he? Gee, lookit this--another tiger! Under the tree
here, dead as a herrin'!"
The torchlight shone brightly now beyond the hole. Rand spoke again.
"In here, fellows. Penned up in a little coop. Can't stand up or get
out. Merry must be here, too--I'm sort of woozy yet. Got knocked cold a
while ago. Pass in a light."
"Bet yer life, ol'-timer! We'll git ye loose in no time. Jest a minute,
till we yank this cat out o' here."
Another hole opened, lower down, as the dead paw was pulled out from the
opening through which it had reached the imprisoned man. Then into the
upper hole came a torch and a fist.
"Here y'are, Davey. Ye ain't busted up, are ye? Good! Then lookit looey,
if he's there with ye. How's he?"
Rand snatched the torch, turned on his knees, and looked down. Just
beyond him lay the former lieutenant. His blond hair was blond no more,
but a dull red. From under him protruded the naked legs and lower torso
of another man whose head and shoulders seemed to be hidden beyond
Knowlton's body. Both were motionless.
Starting up to lift his comrade, Rand struck his head once more against
the solid obstacle above. The blow dropped him back to his knees.
Pressing one hand to his sore scalp, he took his first look about his
prison, seeking a way out.
He had spoken more truly than he knew when he said he was penned in a
coop. Around him rose the encompassing shell of the big old tree, now
uprooted and thrown back prone. Over him was the broken butt, and beyond
him were great fang splinters driven into the torn earth. The tree,
strained too far by the storm wind, had broken across its hollow base,
collapsed on itself, ripped its own stump loose and shoved it back, then
folded and closed like the broken halves of an enormous oyster shell.
Within the cavity the three men were imprisoned.
All this he saw in one slow sweep of the eyes. Then he hunched forward
and pulled at Knowlton, who seemed wedged among gigantic slivers. He
could not move him. But he could, and did, determine that he was alive
and, though senseless and bleeding from a split scalp, not fatally hurt.
The smoke of the torch choked him. Hastily he pivoted about and pushed
it out through the hole.
"Merry's pinned down," he told the anxious men outside. "Got a cut head,
and knocked out, but seems all right otherwise. Got an ax or something?
Maybe I can cut him loose."
"Got both axes," Tim informed him, shoving one through. "We been lookin'
all over the lot for ye, and we come prepared for anything. Here's the
li'l electric flash, too. We'll cut this hole bigger while ye git looey
clear. How'd ye ever git in this trap, anyways?"
Rand wasted no time in explanation just then. Adjusting the little
slide to make the light burn steadily, he wedged the electric torch in a
crack and commenced the difficult task of cutting Knowlton free. So
scant was his headroom that he had to hold the short-handled ax by the
back of the blade and make mere pecks at the long wood fangs. But the
edge was keen, and after steady, careful work he managed to liberate his
companion.
By that time the hole behind him had been enlarged enough to give easy
ingress or exit. As he passed back the ax, McKay ordered him to come
out. But he turned back to Knowlton. Forthwith iron hands gripped his
feet, and he was hauled backward out into the air.
"I said to come out," clipped McKay. "You're done up. I'll get Merry."
And, shoving aside both Tim and José, the captain crawled into the
cavity. Rand, feeling suddenly weak, sprawled where he had been left.
"Humph! Who's this fellow?" came McKay's muffled voice from the hole.
Rand made no answer, and the captain did not spend time in examining the
man he had found under Knowlton. He emerged feet first, dragging the
limp form of the lieutenant.
"Glory be!" blurted Tim after a close look and a hurried examination.
"He's all here. Scratched up some and leakin' on top, but only asleep.
Attaboy, Hozy! Dump it on his head."
José, who had brought a hatful of water, dumped it as requested. McKay,
after a searching glance, nodded and turned back to the hole. Rand
rolled over, crept on hands and knees to Knowlton's side, and saw the
blue eyes flicker open and stare upward. Tim reached to his hip,
produced a flask, uncorked it and held it to the blond-bearded mouth.
The lieutenant promptly swallowed a mouthful of anisado, coughed,
grinned, and struggled up.
"Not so fast, looey," chuckled Tim. "Ye're showin' too much speed for
yer own good--I was goin' to feed ye another shot o' this. If ye want
it, take it quick, or ye won't git it."
"Not now," mumbled the blond man. "Gee, my head aches! Hello, Dave.
What's all the row?"
"Row's all over, Merry. Cap is bringing out the chap we found in the
tree. Tree busted and fell on us while we were waltzing around in there.
Guess the other fellow got busted, too."
"He did," McKay's voice corroborated. "Who was he?"
Tim and José, who until now had known nothing of any other prisoner of
the tree, voiced their amazement as they saw what the captain had hauled
forth. Rand and Knowlton, too, got to their feet and stared downward. In
the wavering torchlight the five men stood in silent contemplation of
the sixth.
He was a muscular man of medium stature, black-haired, strong-faced,
light-skinned, naked except for a loin-clout of dark red cloth and a
necklace of tiger claws: a man whose solid frame indicated a strength
that would make him an ugly antagonist in hand-to-hand combat. But he
never would fight again. His head lay slanting to one side, and his
throat was torn open.
"Big splinter killed him," McKay explained. "It's in the tree there. I
had to pull him off it."
"Find his bow there, too?" queried Rand.
"Didn't notice it. Found a couple of arrows, though, and the little
twenty-two gun. Found a side-arm, too. Yours, Merry?"
He extended a service pistol. Knowlton, after touching his fingers to
his empty holster, took it with a nod of thanks.
"Well, the bow must be there, unless it got knocked outside," Rand
asserted. "He was there when I dived in out of the storm. Knew we were
coming, too, and didn't care for our company. Had his arrow drawn, and
let go as soon as I popped in. Guess he shot a shade too soon--arrow
zipped past my chest and missed. I jumped him. Merry pranced in and fell
all over us. Then the world came to an end."
The others nodded. José sank on one knee and studied the dead man.
"An Indian, amigos, though light of skin," was his judgment. "A Jivero,
perhaps; but I think he is a Yámeo--one of the white Indians. This is
Yámeo country. A lone hunter. But his people cannot be far off."
Heads lifted and eyes searched the gloom. To all except Knowlton, who
had been unconscious at the time, came realization that the rule against
loud gunfire had been broken, and that those reports might have reached
hostile ears. But there was little chance that any searching party would
seek the gunmen before dawn, and dawn was fully eight hours away.
"We can stow him away out of sight," said McKay, jerking his head toward
the tree. "But first, what about that leg of yours, Dave? Looks bad. Jam
it?"
"No. Cat tried to haul me out where he could get me." And Rand briefly
related his experience in the tree.
"Holy jumpin' Jehoshaphat!" rumbled Tim. "Ye sure had a reg'lar time of
it, feller! Luck's with ye, I'll say. Ye had about one chance in a
million o' livin' through that tree smash, and if ye hadn't woke up when
ye did and had yer gat handy--oof! Better wash yer leg right now, before
ye git blood poison."
"Right," McKay seconded. "Both of you fellows clean up before we start
back to camp. José, help Dave. Tim, give Merry a head-wash. I'll attend
to this chap."
Stooping, he gripped the dead man and dragged him back to the tree.
There he shoved him into the cavity where he had died. Glancing around,
he saw the dead tigre which had attacked Rand. With a grim smile he
lifted it and laid it against the opening.
"Hm. Female," he mused. "Leave it to the female to claw a man when he's
out of luck."
Turning, he stepped aside a few feet and found the other brute, a
powerful male. This also he carried to the hole and dropped beside its
mate. Picking up Knowlton's little rifle and Rand's quiver of
arrows--the bow was broken and useless--he returned to the water,
finding the two hunters bathed and being temporarily bandaged with
handkerchiefs.
"Did you babes in the woods get any game to pay us for our work?" he
demanded.
"Couple of huananas. Beauties, too," Knowlton replied. "Ought to be
right over back of you somewhere. I dropped them."
"And the cats ate them," José added. "I saw feathers scattered around in
the bush there."
"A swell pair o' hunters ye are," chaffed Tim. "Kill a couple o'
bananas--I mean huananas--and then let the cats git 'em. Next time ye
can stay to home and let somebody hunt that can bring in the bacon. Come
on, le's git back to camp and open a can or somethin'. We been thrashin'
round lookin' for you guys when we'd oughter been eatin'. Hep, hep--left
oblique to the guardhouse, march!"
The torches moved. In squad column the little band filed slowly away
into the gloom. The lights faded out, and the jungle night again brooded
over the little spot where the gun-bearing intruders had violated its
solitude.
On the black bosom of the placid little lagoon the big stars shone,
mirrored upward in a frame of reflected tree tops. On the trampled
shore, where the sunlight would reveal them to the first Indian eyes to
scan the mud, were the imprints of white men's boots. Those
leather-heeled tracks converged at the cavity in the shattered butt of
the prone tree. And there, in a crude tomb bearing the fresh marks of
white men's axes, a savage son of the jungle who had died fighting white
men lay waiting, guarded by two bullet-torn tigres of the Tigre Yacu.
CHAPTER VIII
THE WHITE INDIANS
Dawn broke.
Up in the tree-tops birds and mammals started from sleep and hurled a
discordant chorus of squawks, squeaks, hoots and howls out into the gray
blanket of night-formed fog. Down beside a little creek men stirred,
peered at their insect bars, yawned, stretched, and sat up in their
hammocks. From one of them sounded a muffled grunt of pain, instantly
subdued.
"How's the leg, Dave?" asked Knowlton, protruding a white-swathed head.
"Little sore," admitted Rand, inwardly cursing himself for that groan.
"Nothing to speak of. How's the head?"
"Head?" with elaborate carelessness. "Forgot I had one."
"Ye're a couple o' cheerful liars, the pair o' ye," rumbled Tim. "Dave,
ye'd oughter be on crutches; and looey, yer neck's three inches
shorter'n 'twas yesterday mornin', not sayin' nothin' about a bump on
yer bean as big as me fist and gosh knows how many stitches in yer
scalp. Lay down again like good dogs."
Knowlton scowled with official severity, forgetful of the fact that the
frown was hidden under his bandages.
"Sergeant Ryan, you're reduced to the ranks and fined one drink of hooch
for insolence----" he began.
"Sssst! Hush, teniente!" José cut in.
His hawk face was shoved forward. His thunderous gun had slid into his
hand. All froze into postures of listening. Except for the animal
noises, no sound came to them save the monotonous drip of moisture in
the dank jungle round about.
"Something moved yonder," the Peruvian muttered, twitching his head. "An
animal sneaking past, perhaps. It is too early for Indians to be moving.
But not too early for us to move."
With which he arose, rolled his hammock, and pitched it into his canoe.
The others, with wary glances at the murky shadows, followed his
example. In less than a minute the little palm hut was bare.
But none embarked. Men must eat, and Tim voiced the general sentiment
when he growled: "By cripes, I'm goin' to have me coffee before I hit
the river, and have it hot. Any war-whoops that want to mix it with me
before I git ready to go can come a-runnin', poison arrers and all."
So, with ears alert but with no haste, the five made their morning meal
by the aid of the faithful sindicaspi wood, which burned smokily in the
heavy air but did its duty. When the frugal meal was finished all hands
rolled the usual cigarettes and squatted beside the coals until the
butts scorched their hardened fingers. But there was no more banter, and
each man's gun stood within elbow-length of him.
Then, when remaining longer would have been mere bravado, they moved
into the canoes and pushed away. Rand limped while getting aboard, and
in his dugout he sat on some supplies, his torn leg eased out in front
of him. Knowlton gave no sign of feeling less energetic than usual. In
silence the small flotilla slipped away toward the misty river.
Once more on the wider water, they found the fog still too thick for any
but slow travel. It was thinning, and patches of it wavered and almost
dissolved, giving short views of one or the other of the banks; but the
great body of it clung stubbornly to the ground. Stroking lazily, they
progressed gradually upstream, awaiting the dissolution of the murk. Tim
found time and inclination for a little grumbling.
"Pretty slow so far," he declared. "Ain't nothin' happened but shootin'
three cats and gittin' looey and Dave out of the hole. Where's all them
head-hunters and the thing that bites off fellers' toes and makes 'em
batty? Where's the bags o' gold? All we git out o' this here, now, Tiger
River is bug bites, seems like."
"Well, you're getting plenty of them, aren't you?" countered Knowlton.
"One thing at a time. Trouble with you is that you're sore because you
missed getting into that tree racket of ours."
"Oh, yeah. And ye're so sore ye can't see straight because ye did git
into it. All the same, I would like to git a li'l action out o' this
trip. I wasn't never brought up to push a paddle for nothin'. When do we
git to the gold?"
"Wouldn't be a bad idea to pan a little dirt before long and see what we
get," suggested Rand. "Water's pretty shallow now, and we're well up."
McKay nodded.
"Been thinking of that," he conceded. "Might give us some idea of what's
ahead."
José, the real source of the expedition, said nothing, though he heard
all. His eyes kept plumbing the slowly clearing shores. Gradually his
strokes lengthened as the mist rolled upward, and the others
automatically adapted their pace to his. At length the fog burned away
completely, and the canoes swung into their regular speed.
For several hours they forged on, silent as usual, hot as usual, bitten
as usual by the insect swarms. Along the banks little life showed:
macaws, quarrelsome toucans, surly male cotomonos which howled monkey
execrations at the intruders while the females scurried away through
the branches, carrying their young clinging on their backs. Then on the
quiet surface appeared bubbles, floating down from ahead; and to the
ears of the canoemen came a soft, elusive sound like wind among high
leaves.
"Ah! We approach a mal-paso--a rapid," José announced. "Do you not hear
the water, amigos? It now is low and quiet; but soon we shall reach
rocks."
The mechanical swing of the paddles quickened a bit. Rocks! For many
long days the voyagers from the Andes had seen not the tiniest stone:
nothing but clay banks and the everlasting walls of tree and bush. Now
the arrival at rock country meant harder work and slower progress, but
it also meant that the mysterious Cordillera del Pastassa, offshoot of
the precious Llanganati, was creeping nearer to them. And up there to
the northwest might be--what? The dream city of El Dorado? The fabulous
mother lode of all gold? Who knew? Save for one man whose brain was
twisted, none had ever come back to tell.
Peering over-side for the first time in hours, McKay saw gravel on the
bottom. His iron face lightened a little, and he put another pound of
power on his paddle.
But when the rocks appeared the eager faces of the North Americans fell.
Accustomed to the fierce mal-pasos and the gorged pongos of the upper
Marañon, they had unconsciously looked for a chasm, even though small.
The obstacles now before them could hardly be dignified by the name of
"bad pass." They were only a few bowlders at a bend, protruding above
the surface like dingy, worn-down molars, visible only because of the
low stage of the water. Yet they were rocks, real rocks, the farthest
outposts of the host of mountain fragments waiting beyond. And, despite
their insignificance, the treasure hunters smiled at them and at the
sleepily murmuring water flowing down between them.
"Here's where you can exercise your manly right arm, Tim, and pan some
gold," Knowlton chaffed. "Just hop over with a shovel and dig down to
bed rock. We'll get lunch."
"Huh! I'd dig halfway to China before I'd hit bed rock in this here mud
country. But I'll pan her once anyways, jest to see what's the color."
And, when the canoes had been forced beyond the barrier, he did. With a
dexterity betokening much practice somewhere farther west, he swirled
the water and the mingled mud and gravel in his pan until he was down to
the dregs.
"Begorry, it's here!" he exploded. "Nothin' much--jest a few flakes--but
it's color! Free gold, gents! Lookit here!"
Eager heads clustered over his pan. For a moment there was silence.
"Uh-huh," commented McKay. "Pretty poor showing, though."
"True for ye, cap. But mebbe further up we'll hit the real stuff. This
here bed is all gummed up with mud. I'll give her another whirl, jest
for luck."
His luck seemed not to improve, however, though he scooped up several
more pans from below and worked them with extreme care. His first
enthusiasm oozed away. After giving the last pan a couple of tilts and a
sour survey he desisted without trying to wash it.
"Yeah, she's got to come acrost better'n this or I won't never tell
nobody she's a friend o' mine," he asserted, clawing out some muddy
gravel. "If only these dirty li'l stones was somethin' besides dirt----"
He stopped, his mouth open. His red lashes lifted, and his eyes seemed
to bulge. Very carefully he set the pan down on the nearest rock. With
the fingers of his free hand he rubbed the "dirty li'l stones" in his
cupped palm against one another. Then he picked one out and grated it
along the bowlder beside him.
"Ho-lee jum-pin' Jee-hosh----" he began. Then, mute, he held up the
stone. From its scraped side flashed a yellow gleam.
"Nugget!" barked Knowlton.
With sudden energy Tim scraped his find again, then scrubbed it under
water with a hard thumb. When he again held it aloft it shone like a
gilt ball.
"Sure as God made the kaiser crazy, 'tis a nuggit!" he exulted. "Mud
stuck to it and camouflaged it. Weighs a couple ounces, easy. Forty
dollars, gents--eight bucks apiece for you guys that ain't panned
nothin' but me. Now le's see ye do a lick o' work for yerselves. Come on
in, the water's fine. Beat ol' Timmy Ryan if ye can! Oh you li'l yeller
baby!"
His exuberant challenge met with instant response. Into the river
splashed his companions, heedless of hunger and of recent injuries from
tiger claw and falling tree. They brought up fistfuls of gravel which
had lodged around the bowlders, and with minute care inspected each one.
Tim, carefully buttoning his nugget in a pocket after assuring himself
that the pocket had no hole in it, fell to scraping and rubbing each of
the little stones which had suddenly become potential treasures.
One by one, however, he cast them away. The whole pan received a rigid
inspection, but no glimmer of yellow showed. He brought up another
panful from the same spot where he had caught the nugget. This, too,
yielded no results.
At length the dripping company ceased work, empty-handed.
"Guess you're the only lucky one in the crowd, Tim," admitted Knowlton.
"Let's see that nugget again."
Tenderly Tim drew it out and handed it over.
"Don't drop it, for the love o' Mike," he adjured. "If she once gits
back in the muck she's gone. Water's all riled up."
With a nod, the lieutenant studied the chunk of metal. Then he passed it
to McKay.
"No wonder we didn't find any more," he said. "That nugget never rolled
down this stream."
"Huh? Oh, I s'pose it rained down last night, then, or mebbe it fell off
one o' these here trees," jeered the red man.
"It never came down in the water," insisted the other. "It's too rough.
Water would wear it smooth. Look at the stones around here--even these
big ones are smoothed off. Not a sharp edge on any of them."
"Right," agreed McKay. "It's well rounded, but not smooth. You can feel
the edges, and see them, too."
"Um. Begorry, ye're right, cap. But how'd she git here--one lonesome
nuggit like that? 'Taint right."
All stared at it, groping for a solution. Presently Knowlton laughed:
"Old Dame Fortune left it here for us, maybe, to encourage us. Sort of a
come-on stunt, eh? Like a girl dropping her handkerchief on the sidewalk
when you look good to her. She's a flirty old dame, is Lady Fortune."
"Sí," grinned José. "But you are forgetting Rafael Pardo, comrades. It
may have been he, not the old lady, who dropped this here. It is less
than a month since he returned to Iquitos, as I have told you, with his
bag of gold. Is it not quite likely that he lost this, and other nuggets
as well, on his outward trail?"
"Guess you've hit the only sensible answer," agreed Rand. "Come on,
let's eat."
The close-drawn knot of men drew apart and turned toward shore. With a
sudden gulp Tim halted short. His mates froze.
Armed Indians confronted them.
There on the bank, arrows drawn back and aimed with deadly accuracy at
each man's breast, stood a dozen hard-faced savages. Their skins were
light, their hair black and cut straight across the brow, their bodies
naked save for tooth-and-claw necklaces and red loin cloths. In stature,
in build, and in expression they might have been brothers of the dead
man left last night in the tree-butt tomb beside the black lagoon.
Motionless from surprise for an instant, the men in the water then began
reaching stealthily toward their wet pistols.
"Alto!" snapped a sharp voice behind them. "Lift those hands or you
die!"
The five heads jerked around. On the other bank they beheld eight more
of the white Indians. These held no bows. Instead, seven of them
squinted down the barrels of big-bored rifles. The eighth, standing a
little to the rear, had a similar rifle but was not aiming it. His face
had a markedly Spanish cast.
The hands of the North Americans poised exactly where they were. The
situation was utterly hopeless. But Captain McKay's voice, when he
replied, was as cold and calm as if he held the power.
"If we do not die here we die hereafter. When and how?"
Across the mouth of the Spanish Indian twitched a fleeting smile.
"You are cool. Die now if you will. All men die. If you do not die here
you may live long. Strong men live."
"Live through what? Torture?"
"No torture. We kill swiftly. Among us a man is all alive or all dead."
McKay glanced once at the bowmen, running his keen gaze along their hard
eyes. He looked back at the seven riflemen and the Spanish-speaking
leader.
"No good, boys," he said quietly. "We haven't a chance. Better
surrender."
His hands rose. Reluctantly his companions followed his example. Turning
about, the captain waded across to the shore where the leader stood. In
his wake swashed the others, still covered from both banks. Up on the
land they went, and there they halted.
"We live on," said McKay, smiling bleakly. "Now what?"
The leader grunted something. The riflemen closed in. Five put their gun
muzzles against the abdomens of their captives. The other two passed
behind the white men.
"Now you will put the hands down. Behind your backs."
As the order was obeyed the two spare riflemen lashed the wrists of each
prisoner tightly with fiber cord. In less than two minutes all were
securely bound. Their weapons were left in their sheaths.
"Now what?" demanded McKay again.
The evanescent smile fled once more across the Spanish face.
"Now we walk. One of you shall die. The others--quien sabe?"
CHAPTER IX
A LIFE FOR A LIFE
Gloomily the pinioned men stood on the bank and watched their captors
gather around the canoes. Despite the firmness of their bonds--every one
of which had been sharply inspected by the leader of the gang--they
still were guarded by two riflemen, one of whom stood at each end of the
line, ready to shoot any prisoner making a sudden move. The other
gun-bearers had waded across the river.
Now, under direction of the leader, half a dozen of the wild men busied
themselves in thoroughly washing every piece of the white men's
equipment. The rifles, the axes, the clothing, the bags and heavy tins,
the cooking and mining utensils--everything was plunged into the river,
swashed about and scrubbed by rough fingers, then thrown upward on the
shore. Watching the immersion of the guns and the puzzled examination
given the bolt actions afterward, the captives silently raged over their
carelessness in leaving their rifles while they clawed in the mud for
gold. The wrath of José was not quite silent.
"Sangre de Cristo!" he hissed in an undertone. "Caught like the fools we
are! Snared by sneaking snakes of Indios while we snatched at stones!
I, José Martinez, trapped like a child! Sí, wash those guns, you
measles-fearing man-killers! I hope you catch a hundred sicknesses!"
Forgotten was his recent statement that he would rather fall prey to
savages than to his own countrymen; forgotten the fact that these wild
men had spared his life, at least for the time. His pride in his ability
to protect himself was cut to the quick, and in the same hissing
monotone he heaped vitriolic maledictions on his captors.
The two guards stirred, scowling at him and moving their gun muzzles
into line with his stomach.
"Let up, José," muttered Knowlton. "We all feel the same way, but mum's
the word. Less talk and more thinking may pull us out of the hole yet."
The outlaw's teeth clicked, and he said no more, though his eyes still
smouldered. Then came a call from the Spanish-speaking leader.
"What is here?"
He pointed downward at one of the sealed tins. Baffled by the heavy
solder, none of his men had been able to open them.
"Open it if you dare," snarled José. "Those boxes are full of diseases
which kill quicker than the bite of a snake."
The effect of the retort was remarkable. Every man of the Indians
jumped back from those harmless tins as if they truly were filled with
sudden death. Several, who had handled the containers, leaped into the
river and frantically scrubbed their hands.
The outlaw broke into a jeering laugh. Maddened, the leader of the
tribesmen plunged in and came straight for him, the rest following
close. Their glittering eyes and hard mouths spoke death to the
captives.
"Halt!" snapped McKay. "Do you kill a man for warning you? He has done
you great service. The diseases cannot harm you unless you let them out.
Now that he has told you, you will not let them out."
His quick wit saved his party. The Indians, though set to kill, glanced
at their leader. That leader stared into McKay's inscrutable face.
"You have promised that only one shall die," added McKay. "Is your
tongue forked?"
The other's gaze swerved to his own men and came back.
"My tongue is straight," he declared. "What I have said shall be."
He gave a sign to his men. Their weapons sank. He spoke, with a backward
jerk of the head. They turned slowly, went back into the water, and
began bringing across the equipment--all except the tins, which they
avoided.
"You are a good leader," McKay complimented. "Your men obey."
A touch of cruel pride flitted over the other's face.
"They know it is best to obey," was the significant retort. With which
he turned his back to the prisoners and watched the transportation of
the loot.
The Scot's compliment had been no idle flattery. The sinewy white Indian
was a good commander. He handled his followers almost as if he were an
American or a European, instead of a savage son of the jungle; and,
despite their position, the ex-soldiers watched with appreciative eyes.
"Spanish blood in this fellow," thought McKay. "It sticks out all over
him. Wonder if José's tale was right, and this chap's descended from
Spanish stock. Wonder who they all are, anyhow. Wonder why we're not
killed at once. Oh well, we may learn."
Aloud he asked: "Who are you? Yámeos?"
"Men of the forest," came the curt answer. "Now walk."
He tilted his head to the left, indicating the direction. The captives
turned downstream. A couple of Indians glided in front of them and led
the way. Behind the adventurers the main body closed in, walking in
file, carrying the plunder from the canoes.
Almost at once the five found themselves in a path. A narrowing,
twisting trail through the forest, it was, and scarcely visible even to
a man following it. But it was a path, perhaps a rod back from the edge
of the bank, where the voyagers had supposed the bush to be utterly
trackless; and along it the guiding pair slipped ahead as fast as if it
were a broad highway. The bound men following found themselves hard put
to it to maintain the speed set by the pace-makers, for their walking
wind had been shortened by many days of river travel. Rand, limping
along on torn leg muscles, found the going doubly hard. But he set his
teeth and strove to keep up.
It was the commander of the party who gave the word to slow down. He
trod close at Rand's heels, and he saw the lameness of the green-eyed
man; but he made no effort to ease the prisoner's difficulty until he
himself felt the consequences of it. The injured leg, stiff and sore,
failed to clear a projecting root, and Rand stumbled and fell. The
Indian behind tripped over him and bumped his head sharply against a
tree. He was up instantly, glaring at the prostrate man and at the tree
he had hit; but he realized that the blame rested not on the prisoner
but on the pace at which they were moving. He snapped something at the
guiding pair, who had continued on. They stopped.
The leader glowered suspiciously at Rand's leg, as if he thought the
prisoner to be malingering; for Rand now wore his boots, concealing the
bandages around the limb.
"What ails the leg?" he demanded. "The forest is no place for the lame."
"The claws of a tigre," panted Rand, still prone and snatching a
moment's rest.
A quick light flickered in the hard eyes.
"When did the claws of the tigre strike?"
"Last night."
A short nod and a tightening of the mouth followed. Roughly he hauled
Rand to his feet. To the pair ahead he grunted briefly. They resumed
their advance, but at a slower pace. Wondering what was in the leader's
mind, but thankful for slower progress, Rand went on.
For perhaps two hours the march continued without a halt. Glancing from
time to time at the sun-slanted shadows, the captives observed that they
were working steadily southward. Now and then they caught gleams of
water at their left, where the river wound close to the path and then
veered off again. At length, at a cool little brook, the whole band
stopped to drink.
Here McKay asked a question which had been puzzling him.
"Where do you get your guns?"
"From men who came here before you," was the straightforward answer. "We
use them only for war. The yellow things that kill are few. From those
men I learned the tongue you speak. From you we shall learn how to use
these new guns--before you go."
As he spoke he frowned down at McKay's own rifle, which he held in one
hand. McKay had seen him trying to pull back the bolt, without first
lifting it. So far as the Indian was concerned, the gun was locked
tight. The captain did not enlighten him regarding the method of working
a bolt action.
"Before we go where?" he demanded.
"Where the other men went."
His eyes strayed to Tim, red-bearded, red-headed. His shadowy smile
flitted across his mouth and was gone. Abruptly he arose and gave the
sign to move on.
As they resumed their march, a chill crept up the backs of the five. All
had seen that brief stare at red Tim and the slight smile that went with
it. All knew this man had said that one of them should die. And all
recalled the grim jest of José, made days before: that Tim's hair would
be braided into the hair belt of the Jivero who killed him. That
careless joke now loomed as a prophecy.
Yet on the heels of this thought came another--not one of their captors
wore a girdle of human hair. They might not be Jiveros. Their commander
had promised life to four of them. And--they could only march on, hoping
for some miraculous change of luck.
For another hour or more no word was spoken. The occasional sidelong
glances of the captives showed them that they had left the river, for
no water-gleam now came to their eyes. At length they did meet water
again, but it was a creek, not the river. Up along this they filed for a
couple of hundred yards. Then they debouched into a clearing.
An oval-shaped house of up-and-down logs, thickly thatched with palm; a
knot of armed men standing before the door; several small mud huts
around it; a plantation at the rear, with women at work--these were the
first impressions of the white men. McKay, striding at the head of his
unfortunate company and bulking tall over the heads of the two guides,
noted three more things as they neared the big house: that it was big
enough to hold a hundred people, that it looked much more new than the
mud huts beyond, and that the warriors before it showed signs of travel.
Their faces lit up as they saw the captives, and they grunted as if they
now saw something for which they had been hunting. The captain, used to
watching faces, guessed that this party also had been out beating the
bush in a search for strangers.
Almost up to the door the captors and captives went. Then the guides
stopped. The prisoners halted. The Indians behind spread out and
surrounded them in a half-horseshoe, open end toward the door. Through
that door, without awaiting a summons, now came a man whom the newcomers
knew to be the chief.
Slightly taller than his men, past middle age, harsh of face, with
brown eyes burning like tawny coals in deep sockets, he was a grim
figure. In his thick black hair, unblanched by any sign of gray, parrot
plumes rose as his crown of rank. Like his men, he wore a necklace of
tiger claws; but, unlike them, he had also arm bands of big fang teeth,
and--a hair girdle.
Wide and thick and black was that sinister cincture, reaching from the
waist to the loins. In it gleamed no lighter shade: no brown, no gold,
no red. But every man of the five saw that the hollow eyes of the ruler,
after passing along their faces, returned to the blond beard of Knowlton
and the glinting red of Tim's hair.
He said no word until the report of the capture was made. When the white
Indian holding McKay's gun finished his tale he pointed at Rand. The
chief followed the gesture, looked down at the lame man's boots, lifted
his gaze and somberly studied the impassive face of the former Raposa.
Then he spoke.
In a tone low but harsh as his face he ground out a curt sentence. Two
men went to one of the little mud huts. Immediately they came out again,
bearing between them a pole litter on which lay a rigid figure covered
with big leaves.
Straight up to the prisoners they came. On the ground before them they
put the litter down. With a few swift motions they stripped the leaves
from the still form.
The five looked down at the dead face and the torn throat of the wild
man who had fallen fighting in the hollow tree.
For a moment there was utter stillness. Then the whites, looking up,
found the chief's eyes boring into their faces. Abruptly he spoke again.
The Spanish-speaking leader translated his words.
"You have killed this man of mine. You have torn the throat of a hunter
of my tribe and let out his spirit. For that you all should die. But
there is other use for you. You shall live to pull the wheel. All but
the man who killed my warrior. That man dies. Who is he?"
McKay answered.
"The great chief has it wrong. This man was killed by a tree splintered
by storm. We took him off the splinter. We laid him back in the tree
where no tigre could destroy him. We left two dead tigres to guard him.
Let the chief blame the storm."
The hard mouth of the chief only grew tighter.
"The storm harms us not. You men have killed my hunter. One of you must
go down his trail and pay him for his life. One goes or all go."
His eyes dwelt on Rand, whose tiger-clawed leg had been reported to him.
Then they shifted to Tim. Plainly he believed Rand to be the man most
implicated in the death of his subject. Yet he obviously coveted the red
man's hair, and hoped he might be the guilty one.
"You know the man who killed," he rasped. "Who is the man?"
For a moment there was silence. The three soldiers, who had fronted
death many times on another continent; the outlaw, who lived by his own
deadliness; the former Wild Dog of the Javary jungle, who had roved for
years among violent endings of life--all searched the relentless visage
of the chief. Through each man's mind went the same thought: that
through the death of one the rest should live.
Moved by the same impulse, all stepped forward. Like one man all
answered:
"I!"
CHAPTER X
RED SPOTS
For an instant every man of the five stood defiantly fronting the chief.
Then each became aware of the fact that his comrades also had
volunteered for death.
"Git back!" Tim muttered. "I'll take this on! Git----"
"It is mine!" hoarsely disputed José. "I am but an outlaw--let me----"
"You both shut up!" growled Knowlton. "I was there and you guys
weren't----"
Rand cut short the tragic argument. He strode across the body, limped up
to the chief, and nodded. The chief nodded in response. The Indian
directness of the move went straight to his mind, and the steady green
eyes convinced him that here was the right man.
Once more he spoke in the same harsh monotone. As before, the
interpreter translated.
"The sun of to-day sinks. Those who live shall see more suns rise. This
man shall see one sun. While the stars shine you shall stay there."
The chief pointed to one of the mud hovels. Without another word he went
back into the big house.
Forthwith the five were herded to the designated hut. At its entrance
the leader halted them. At a word from him each man's belt was unbuckled
and, with its weapons dangling from it, taken away. Then, still bound,
they were shoved into the dank interior.
Leaving four warriors on guard outside the house, the rest went back to
the tribe-house and busied themselves carrying in the loot. Until it was
all transported, the dead man lay stark and still on the ground. Then
two men grasped the litter and carried it away toward the rear of the
place.
"Thought so," nodded McKay, who had been coolly watching. "They found
that fellow early and saved him for a third-degree stunt. Sent one gang
up-river and the other down. They traveled fast, and the upstream bunch
caught us cold. The down-river detachment got back just before we came."
After eying the guards, who stood suggestively ready, he turned and
looked about the bare prison from which Rand was to go forth to death at
the next sunrise. As a place of confinement it was almost ideal, at
least from the standpoint of the jailers; for it had no windows, its
roof was a solid sheet of sun-baked clay supported by close-laid poles,
and there was no possible means of exit except through the doorway,
which could easily be blocked up and guarded. To men confined in it,
however, it was a miserable hole--damp, clammy, unprovided with either
conveniences or necessities. No hammocks, no water--nothing at all was
in it except a small cracked clay jar in one corner.
"I don't think much of this town's guest house," remarked Knowlton,
sourly surveying the place.
"And the things I'm thinkin' about them guys that put us here ain't fit
to eat," seconded Tim. "Now we're in the coop they might untie us, if
nothin' more. Me hands are dead already from these ropes on me arms."
The others, with hands equally numb, nodded.
"They may cut us loose later," McKay encouraged. "If not, I'll do it."
"Huh? How?"
"Jack-knife. Got one here in my right pocket."
"Yeah? I got one, too, but I dunno how to git to it with me hands tied
like this."
"Simple enough. One of you fellows get a couple of fingers into my
pocket and fish it out. We can open it somehow and cut one man's cords.
Then he'll free the rest of us."
"Gosh, ye think of everything, don't ye, cap? That'll help a lot, and a
smoke afterwards will help a lot more. Then mebbe we can dope out some
way to git clear o' this place."
McKay made no answer to this. His glance strayed to Rand, who had sunk
down against a wall and eased his aching leg out before him. Catching
the look, Rand smiled somberly.
"This leg won't hurt me to-morrow at this time, Rod," he said.
Black scowls met his stoic jest. Think as they might, none could see any
possibility of evading the execution at dawn. But none would admit it.
"Por Dios, I would not be too sure of that, Señor Dave," protested José.
"We have all night to work ourselves out of this place, even though they
will bar the door. And if once I can get at the guards with cold
steel----"
He moved his jaw eloquently toward his throat.
But Rand only shook his head slightly and contemplated the opposite
wall. One by one the others sank down beside him and silently stared at
the same wall, thinking, thinking, thinking--but seeing no hope.
"If ye'd stayed where ye was, Dave, 'stead o' walkin' right up the
chief's stummick, ye'd be safe now," Tim asserted morosely. "He wants
this red mop o' mine in his corset. Dang it, why didn't ye keep quiet?"
"Why didn't _you_ keep quiet?" countered Rand. "I'm the logical
candidate anyway. I jumped that Indian in the tree. Merry only fell on
top of us, and you three weren't there at all. Besides, I haven't any
folks up home, and I'm crippled for awhile with this leg, and--well, I'm
the goat. Now shut up. There's no more to say."
Tim growlingly subsided. For some time all sat wordless, moving only to
ease their positions. Outside, the guards stood watching steadily
through the open doorway, and other tribesmen came, stood, stared,
grunted among themselves, and went away. The sun-shadows, already long,
slid faster and faster to the eastward as the earth rolled toward
darkness. Within the house, the dimness shaded into dusk.
At length Knowlton hitched forward, got to his knees, and heaved himself
up.
"Guess I can get that knife when you're ready, Rod," he said. "My hands
aren't quite so numb now. I've been holding my wrists close together to
ease the cords."
"Wait for dark. We're watched too closely now."
The blond man began pacing up and down. After a few turns he approached
the cracked pot, kicked it out where the light was a little better, and
peered at it.
"Ugh!" he grunted. "Dried blood!"
He gave it one more kick, knocking it back to the wall. It struck
sharply and broke into chunks. One of them spun against José. The
bushman glanced at it, then bent and looked closely.
"Not blood," he corrected. "It is too red. This is an old pot of anatto
dye, which they use to color their red loin cloths."
Yawning, he got up and strode to the doorway. The guards drew together
and fronted him with weapons ready.
"Oh, do not fear, poor little ones," sneered the outlaw. "I will not
attack you--not yet. I want water. Water, you fools! My throat is
parched."
The Indians made no response. They only watched, uncomprehending.
"Agua!" roared José. "Water! You wood-heads, you rocks--agua!"
From a group near the door of the big house came the leader of the gang
which had caught them.
"Agua!" José yelled again. "Water, and food, too! Will you starve us and
choke us with thirst? Agua! Carne!"
The advancing Indian scowled at the imperious tone. But, after a gesture
with one finger, he grunted something to another man near by. The man
went along the curving wall of the tribe-house and barked something at
women near a rear door. Presently several women approached, bearing clay
jars and platters.
Reaching the guards, they stopped and stared fearfully at the gaunt
red-capped outlaw, who still stood scowling in the doorway. They were
young and good-looking, as light-skinned as their men, clothed only in
short hip-bands of the red fiber cloth worn by the warriors; but José
showed them scant courtesy.
"Make haste!" he snarled. "We do not want to look at you, but to eat and
drink. Come here!"
Instead, they retreated. The Indian leader spoke curtly. They hastily
put down their burdens and fled back to the rear door. Men came forward
and carried the victuals into the prison pen.
"How are we to eat without hands?" demanded José. "Are you afraid to
untie us even when we are penned up and without weapons? You are brave!"
The commander scowled again. Then his eyes fastened on something peeping
over the Peruvian's waistband. In two steps and a clutch he had it--a
hidden knife, whose hilt had worked up into view unnoticed by its owner.
Without a word he turned the chagrined outlaw around and cut his bonds.
Then, with a sneering smile, he threw down the knife and stalked out.
With a muttered oath, José worked his stiffened fingers a minute or two,
then picked up the keen weapon in mingled relief and rage--the rage due
to the contemptuous manner in which the Indian had answered his taunt.
Outside, the savage watched, then spoke.
"Eat well. When you are on the wheel you will not feast. Use your knife
to kill yourself to-night if you will. It may be better for you."
While José stared at him he strode away.
In less than half a minute the floor was littered with severed cords,
the Americans were rubbing their numbed hands together, and José's
knife had vanished into its secret sheath. In another minute all were
squatting in jungle style around the food and water. The bill of fare
was fish, fruit, and meat--the first two sweet and fresh, the meat
offensive to both nose and palate. However, the meat went the way of the
rest; and when José, with an ironical bow to the guards, put the dishes
outside the door they were bare.
"I notice they keep speaking of a wheel," remarked Knowlton, when his
cigarette was going. "Seems to be something unpleasant."
"I believe the old Spanish Inquisition had a wheel," suggested McKay.
"Umph! Hope it's nothing like that. Besides, that fellow promised no
torture. What do you make of it, José, and of these people?"
"Of the wheel I make nothing, señor. I cannot guess what it may be. Of
the people I make only this: they are not shrinkers of heads, unless the
heads are kept in the big house, which may be possible. We have seen
none. At the same time, they have the Jivero custom of keeping the women
apart from the men; there is a separate door at the rear for them. They
are like Jiveros in some ways, unlike them in others--keeping us alive,
for one. They have not been here many months; their big house is too
new. If I could have my way they would not be here one hour longer, but
in hell."
"Yeah. Ye said a mouthful that time," contributed Tim. "But wishin'
don't git us nothin'. If it did I'd wisht for one o' them diseases
they're so scairt of. I bet if we broke out with smallpox or measles or
somethin' over night they'd knock down the whole jungle runnin' away
from us. Hullo, here comes more trouble."
A dozen men were coming across the stumpy clearing, bearing spears and
short but heavy logs. The prisoners arose and stood alert--Tim with
fists shut, José with a hand on his knife, McKay and Rand feeling for
clasp-knives in their pockets, Knowlton holding a jagged section of the
shattered dye-pot. But none of the Indians entered the hut. They dropped
their logs at the doorway. Two more came up with stout poles.
While the prisoners watched, the poles were set into deep holes at each
side of the doorway. The log sections were piled on one another, between
poles and wall, across the entrance. In a few minutes the doorway was
blocked by a solid wall of logs reaching from the ground to within a
hand's breadth of the top, where a small opening was left to admit air.
Then came sounds of men walking on the low roof, and the barrier, which
had hung outward a little against the poles, was forced back tight
against the door edges as if drawn by ropes around the uprights.
"Crude jail door, but mighty effective," commented Rand. "They've roped
it back against a big tree just behind here. It would take us a week to
break out."
As if in answer, through the air-hole came the warning voice of the
Spanish-speaking Indian.
"Men watch through the night. If this wall moves they kill."
No answer came from the prisoners, who now stood in dense gloom. Voices
grunted outside, and a whiff of smoke drifted in. Almost at once the
last sunlight vanished from the farther jungle. The night noise of
animals and frogs broke out. Through the air-hole a yellowish light
glimmered and the hiss of flames sounded. The guards had started a
protective fire and were settling themselves for their vigil until dawn.
"Well," came Rand's unemotional voice, "guess I'll curl up for a good
sleep."
"Wait a minute," shot Knowlton, a quiver in his tone. "Thanks to Tim, I
have an idea. Thanks to a chafed knee, I have a little can of talcum
powder in my pocket. Thanks to luck, we have water and some dried anatto
dye. Rod, is your flashlight in your shirt pocket as usual?"
"Yes. Why?"
"Here's why. Those fellows outside are dead afraid of disease. Now
listen hard."
His voice mumbled rapidly for a minute. Then sounded a subdued chorus of
approval.
"Por Dios, it will do!"
"By cripes, ye got the right dope, looey!"
"Good head, Merry. We'll try it out."
José stole to the door and, through the air-slit, watched the guards at
their fire. The others huddled in a corner, where, in the white sheen
of the little electric ray, they worked with powder and moistened dye.
They worked slowly and with extreme care. At length McKay strode to José
and muttered: "All right. Your turn next."
The outlaw stepped to the corner, and the tall captain stood guard at
the slit. For a while longer the white light in the corner burned. Then
it winked out.
"All set, Rod," said Knowlton. "We can turn in now."
The five stretched themselves on the floor.
The night wore on. To the ears of the squatting guards came the roars of
prowling tigres, the howls of cotomonos, the other night noises of the
tropic forest. But from the prison came no sound.
At length two of them arose, advanced with a torch, narrowly inspected
the log wall, listened, passed around the house, looked at the roof,
listened again at the door. At that moment came a dread sound from
within: groans of a man in deadly pain and sickness. Followed other
voices and a sound of water being poured. Then, except for more groans,
all was still.
The pair stared soberly at each other. Then they slipped back to the
fire and told their mates. None went near the door again. All watched it
and listened.
Came a babbling voice, broken by louder groans and piteous appeals for
water. Presently it rose to a shrill, terrible note like that of a
death-scream. This was followed by an outbreak of exclamations,
questions, calls to one who did not reply, scaling down into mumbling
tones. Then came silence again.
The stars rolled westward. The dank chill of the hours before dawn made
the guards shiver and draw close to the fire. At last a wan light came
into the sky, brightening fast. The animal world roused itself to its
daybreak clamor. The door of the tribe-house opened. Men emerged, and
the guards rose to meet them.
They grunted rapidly, pointing to the clay prison. A worried scowl came
on the faces of their auditors, among whom was the leader who spoke
Spanish. After a moment of hesitation he walked to the mud house and
ordered the others to release the door. As quickly as possible they
obeyed, pulling out half of the logs. Then they retreated.
Within the hut the leader saw only dimness. He stepped closer and leaned
inside. For a moment he stood petrified. Then he sprang back.
Rigid on the floor before him lay the man who was to have been executed
that morning. His jaw hung slack. His upturned face was ghastly with the
pallor of death. And against that awful pallor stood out a thick
sprinkling of malevolent reddish spots.
CHAPTER XI
THE LOOTER
A hollow groan echoed out from the dank pen.
Before the starting eyes of the Indians, a white man came reeling from a
dark corner at the rear--the tall black-bearded one. His groan was
echoed by another, and a second figure staggered into sight: the blond
man with the bandaged head. Both were blanched and haggard of face. And
on each of those faces, on their necks, and on their arms as well,
flamed virulent spots far more red and appalling than those of the
corpse.
They lurched to the doorway and hung there, staring glassily. Hoarsely
they begged:
"Agua! Water--for the dying!"
Frozen, dry-mouthed, the savages stood staring speechless at the
frightfully diseased creatures who yesterday had been strong men.
"Agua!" croaked the pair again. Then, with the desperation of beings
already doomed, they came crawling over the logs and lunged straight at
their captors, reaching for them with the malignantly spotted hands.
Behind them appeared two more men--the red-headed one and the hawk-faced
Spaniard--and on them, too, glared the blotches of deadly contagion.
In that instant the wild men of the jungle ceased to be men. They became
screaming creatures bereft of sense and reason by frenzied fear. From
bullets, from cold steel, from poisoned arrows or spears they would not
have retreated an inch; but from those lunging, reaching corpses whose
touch meant hideous death to all their tribe--they recoiled, collided,
struck and clawed one another, fought madly to get away, and, shrieking,
bolted for their tribal house.
But that house, a fortress against jungle enemies, was no defense
against the dread thing pursuing them now. Somehow the dying men found
the strength to run after them, treading close on their flying heels and
reaching, reaching, reaching for them, grinning horribly as they sped.
There was no time to throw the stout door of their home into place and
bar out those awful creatures. Before they could even struggle through
the opening the two foremost pursuers got their clammy clutches on three
or four of them--clutches which did not hold, but which froze their
hearts with insane terror.
Screeching like lost souls harried through Hades by malicious demons,
they fought through the portal and ran madly on toward the door
connecting the quarters of the warriors with those of the women. To
their horror-struck fellows they gasped the frightful news as they
fled. Paralyzed for an instant, those who heard the fatal tidings gaped
at the doorway and saw the red-spotted apparitions coming relentlessly
on. The wave of fear which had swept the first fugitives into flight
engulfed them also. The big house became a chaos of frenzied men.
The chief himself, standing beside his hammock with a throwing-spear
poised for attack, was caught in the mob terror sweeping the place. For
a minute he stood his ground, fighting against the chill that enwrapped
his heart. If the advancing dead-alive men had hesitated he would have
held his position, hurling one javelin after another at them. But they
did not hesitate, did not waver. With inexorable tread they came
straight at him, grinning those grisly grins, stretching out hands empty
but more menacing than if they held weapons.
His hollow eyes darted aside. His mouth writhed in repulsion. With a
choking grunt he hurled his spear at the black-bearded specter in the
lead. McKay, watching keenly, lurched aside. The missile flew wild. The
chief spun about and leaped headlong away toward the thin partition
beyond which were the women's quarters.
Under the weight of the men hurling themselves at the one small door,
that partition caved in and collapsed. Among its fragments the howling
mob struggled, fell, scrambled up and dashed on toward the exit, already
jammed with women shrieking and clawing their way out. For a moment or
two a panic-stricken maelstrom swirled about that door. Then at last,
bruised and scratched and bleeding, the whole tribe was outside and
rushing for the shelter of the forest.
Had any of them paused to look back toward the mud prison, he would have
seen a thing which might either have restored his reason or knocked the
last vestige of sense from his quivering brain. There among the stumps,
halfway across the clearing and heading for the tribe house, was swiftly
creeping a fifth red-spotted man: the dead man who had lain just within
the doorway when the logs were taken down; the man who was to have borne
the vengeance of the tribe for the death of the hunter. But none paused.
Men, women, children, old and young, strong and weak, all tore for the
protecting labyrinth of tree and bush. And the dead man reached the
house and vanished.
Within the doorway, Rand found a scene of wreckage which suggested the
devastation of an exploding shell. Hammocks were torn down, weapons lay
scattered over the floor, clay cooking vessels were overturned and
shattered, the debris of the partition jutted in jagged segments, and
smoke from the newly lit breakfast fires drifted over all. In the midst
of it he saw his comrades, grouped at the chief's hammock, swiftly
buckling on their weapon-belts, gathering up their rifles and axes and
hammocks, stuffing into pockets and shirts small parts of their
plundered equipment which could be carried away without hampering their
movements. As fast as he could he limped to them.
"Here's Dave!" rumbled Tim. "Hullo, ye dog-gone stiff! Who said ye could
come alive? Don't ye know ye croaked with smallpox last night? Wal, now
shake a leg. We got to move, double time."
The green-eyed man was moving already. In a few fleeting seconds he was
belted and armed like the rest.
"Hate to leave so much of our duffle," grumbled Knowlton, "but we have
to flit from this festive scene while the flitting is good, and pack
animals are bum flitters. If we can get back to the canoes we'll find
our cans of grub and cartridges there, anyhow."
"Sí," grinned José, "and if these Indios follow us there they will soon
learn that I told no lie when I said those bullet-tins were filled with
quick death. And when they return here they will find none of our
plunder waiting for them. If we cannot have it, they shall not. Hold my
rifle a moment."
With which he snatched blazing sticks from the chief's fire and bounded
to the smashed partition. Swiftly he worked along the debris, firing it
in a dozen places. It flamed up instantly, the blaze crawling rapidly up
to the tindery palm-thatch roof.
"An affectionate adios to the gentleman who advised me to kill myself
before morning," he chuckled, loping back. "Now outside, comrades! If we
go quickly we may go unseen. They ran into the bush at the rear--we go
out at the front--the house hides us. Come!"
Out to the entrance they strode. A quick glance around, and they struck
for the path, which opened ahead. At every step they expected to hear a
yell from the jungle behind, announcing that they had been sighted. But
none came.
Into the bush they plunged. There, for the space of one brief glance,
they paused to look back. Already the tribe-house was vomiting black
clouds from roof and doors. Up from the smoke-hole at the peak darted a
flare of flame. Even if the whole tribe should rush back to it now, it
was doomed. So was any man who dared to enter it.
"José, take the lead," commanded McKay. "Dave, you march second. Tim and
Merry, follow in file. March!"
Thus, in four crisp sentences, he arranged his little command in the
most effective order: the veteran bushman as guide, the injured man
where his bad leg would not compel him to fall behind the rest, and the
bulk of his fighting force instantly available for rear-guard action.
McKay, in the post of danger, strode behind, keeping a watchful eye and
ear open toward the rear.
For a time all forged ahead in silence, José picking the dim trail with
unerring eye, Rand stoically hobbling onward at good speed, Tim and
Knowlton careful not to crowd their lame comrade. Presently Knowlton
began to chuckle.
"Did it work?" he exulted. "Oh, boy! We sure must be a handsome gang of
corpses, from the reception we got. Dave, you missed the best show of
your life."
"Didn't miss much," Rand denied. "I came to life in time to watch you
chase them into the house. Saw them come yelping out of the back door,
too. Finest free fight I ever clapped an eye on.
"Yeah," assented Tim. "I dang near laffed out loud when they busted
right through the wall. Seemed like I was back home watchin' a movie
show. Gosh, I'll be glad when I can wash this powder off me face. I feel
like a chorus girl."
"Silence in the ranks!" snapped the captain. But his mouth twitched as
the ludicrous side of it struck him too. Again he saw the chief turn
tail and fight madly with his own men in flight from four faces whitened
with talcum and dotted with harmless dye-spots. And as he caught a
subdued humming from Tim and recognized the air he laughed silently. The
ex-sergeant was softly singing to himself an army tune beginning:
"One battalion jumped right over the other battalion's back----"
But the smile vanished in a flash, and he wheeled. Muffled, almost
deadened by the intervening jungle, a roar of raging yells sounded back
at the clearing where the tribe-house now must be a belching furnace.
The Indians had returned to their toppling stronghold.
"Sounds like the beginning of another party," muttered Knowlton, inching
back his breech-bolt to make sure his gun still was loaded.
"Uh-huh. But they sure are crazy if they foller us up," said Tim. "They
ain't got nothin' to fight with but hands and teeth. They dropped
everything when they made their gitaway, and all their weppins are
burnt. We could easy massacree the whole layout."
For the first time the full extent of José's revenge on the Indians
dawned on the rest. He had not merely burned their house: he had plunged
the whole tribe into the most abject poverty, if not into actual
tragedy. They were without shelter, save for the few small, wretched
clay huts; without food except for the products of the plantation which
they had trampled down in their flight; without weapons, in a savage
jungle where weapons meant life. True, they could exist, and no doubt
would exist, until they could rehabilitate themselves. But for a time
they would be virtually at the mercy of any fate that came their way,
and for a longer time they would be a weak, disorganized tribe.
"Guess their morale has suffered a severe jolt," McKay summarized it.
"But they'll make it hot for us if they can."
And there was no relaxing of alertness as the little column went on. All
knew that they left behind them a plain trail; that soon the absence of
the dead man and the presence of the telltale broken dye-pot would be
discovered; that somewhere an unbroken bow and a few arrows might yet
remain; and that only five arrows, skillfully shot, were needed to wipe
out their whole party. Wherefore silence and vigilance again ruled.
But whatever the furious white Indians may have thirsted to do was not
done. The adventurers, once more doggedly heading toward the mysterious
cordillera to the north, wound steadily onward without attack. They
passed from the creek into the streamless shadows, through them to the
water-gleams of the river, up along the Tigre Yacu to the first rocks,
where yesterday they had found gold and capture. To-day, at the same
spot, they found something equally unexpected.
Approaching it, they heard sounds which at first seemed to be the
recurrent murmur of the water. A few rods farther on, they slowed and
listened hard; for now the mutter seemed to be that of voices. José,
scowling, slipped on ahead, motioning to the rest to wait. Hardly had he
disappeared among the trees when an unmistakable noise broke through
the curtain of brush--the thump of a heavily laden tin container.
"By cripes, some more guys are at our stuff!" fiercely whispered Tim.
"Lemme git by, Dave. I'll learn 'em somethin', the mutts!"
Rand, however, declined to yield his place or to be hurried. Despite his
injury, he was creeping forward with the old stealth that had been his
when he was the Wild Dog of the Javary. Tim swallowed his impatience and
trailed him in silence, Knowlton and McKay close behind.
The thumping sound came again, and with it a voice that seemed familiar,
speaking Spanish. In it was a note of malicious joy, with an undertone
of fear.
"So the illustrious gentlemen have gone to the devil as they said they
would. Ha! Ha! 'A quick voyage to you,' I said, and so it was. My polite
señores, I trust that you now roast comfortably in hell. Ha, ha! Quick,
you clumsy ladroncillo! Take this one also. Los Indios blancos--the
white Indians--may be close to us."
Another bump. Then the sarcastic voice of José.
"For your good wishes I thank you, Señor Bocaza (Big Mouth). But I think
it is you who goes to the devil."
With a rush the Americans emerged from the bush beside José. The
Peruvian, with a leering grin, was sighting down the barrel of his
rifle. On the river lay a newly arrived canoe--a two-man craft. In it,
bending over with his hands on one of the American cases, stood the
Indian whom José had chastised at San Regis. On the farther bank,
clutching another case, his face blanched yellow-white, crouched the
Moyobambino trader, Torribio Maldonado.
CHAPTER XII
DEATH PASSES
Shocked speechless, the rascally trader squatted rigidly for a moment,
eyes and mouth gaping at the men whom he had just consigned to eternal
torment. Then his lips moved.
"Cien mil diablos!" he gasped.
"Do you say so?" mocked José. "A hundred thousand devils? I did not know
there were so many. I know only one--the great horned devil of them all.
The others must be mean little diablillos like yourself. If they are not
too proud to associate with you they will soon have a new companion. How
will you have your traveling ticket--in the head or the stomach?"
The yellow pallor of the other became ghastly. He tried to shrink behind
the tin case, which was far too small to hide him.
"San Pablo! Santo Tomás! Santa Ana!" he mouthed. Then, in desperation,
he rose quivering to his feet.
"Amigo mio," he whined, "I was but taking your goods to a safe place
where the accursed Indios would not get them, and where I could start a
party to search for you. I thought you were captured----"
"And so we were," taunted the outlaw. "Perhaps you stirred up those
Indios blancos to hunt us down, yes? That would be a true Moyobamba
trick."
"But no--Santo Domingo, no! Never would I do such a thing. I am mad with
joy to find you alive, amigos! Only put down that gun--it gives me a
coldness in the middle, though I know you are only having your little
joke--ha, ha! Only put down the gun, Don José."
José's eye flickered over his gun-sight. His trigger finger tightened by
a hair's weight. Then it loosened.
"Don José?" he purred menacingly. "What is the rest of the name, you who
know so much?"
"Martinez. Oh, yes, I know you, Don José. Who has not heard of the
famous----"
"Pah! Your lies and your flattery both sicken me! Once I was a don, a
caballero, but you know nothing of those days. All you know is that I am
a killer of men. Of _men_, not of whining pups. I will not waste a
precious bullet on you. I will save it for an Indian, a snake, a
monkey--something worth killing."
The menacing muzzle sank. But, as the Moyobambino began sidling toward
his canoe, it rose again.
"Not so fast! Pick up that case under your hands and carry it into the
San Regis canoe nearest to you. Then carry all the others and pack them
carefully, every one. If you miss one, you ladrón, or forget to take
one out of your own boat, you go floating down the Tigre with a hole in
your liver. Now work!"
The Señor Torribio Maldonado worked. Perspiring profusely, he packed
those cases with faultless precision and extreme dispatch. Meanwhile the
Americans, though watching appreciatively, kept their ears open for any
sound from behind. None came.
"Shall we let him go, capitán, or take him with us?" José queried in an
undertone. "We can use the pair of them for work-slaves and punish them
well for sneaking after us in this way, and we shall know they stir up
no trouble behind us."
McKay studied him quizzically. The hard face of the descendant of the
Conquistadores showed that he was not joking. Left to his own
inclinations, he would make that pair sweat blood in the days to come.
"Don't want them," the captain refused. "More trouble than they're
worth."
"I will see that they give no trouble," was the significant promise.
"So will I--by not having them around. I told you, back on the Marañon,
that this fellow was your meat, but I'll take charge now."
"As you wish, capitán."
McKay motioned, and his four mates went with him into the stream.
Maldonado watched their approach with obvious misgiving, but he dare
not attempt to flee. On the farther shore McKay faced him.
"You! Do you want to live?" he snapped. "If you----what's the matter
with you?"
Maldonado had shrunk back, staring from face to face, a new terror in
his eyes.
"The spots!" he breathed. "Your faces--your hands----"
"It is la fiebre encarnada--the red fever," interrupted José, grinning
wickedly. "You do not know the red fever? No? We caught it among your
friends the white Indians, back yonder. They have it much worse than we.
It drives men mad, Torribio. Those wild men were tearing their own house
apart when we came away, they were so mad from the red spots. At any
moment we, too, may become crazed. Hah!"
With a horrible grimace, he shot out one red-spotted hand and rubbed it
over the Moyobambino's face. Squeaking with fear, the wretch tripped
backward, sprawled over the edge, soused into the water. He came up
gasping, and scrambled into his own canoe.
"Go!" rasped McKay, gritting his teeth to hold a stern face. "This is
your last chance. Paddle hard to the great river and you may live.
Otherwise----"
He paused. The trader, now all atremble between his fear of José, of the
white Indians, and of this new disease of the river of evil repute, did
not wait to hear what might happen otherwise. He went.
His canoe bumped between the bowlders and fled downstream, the Indian
and his master heaving it away with strokes that bent their tough
paddles. Rapidly it diminished to a blot at the apex of twin angular
ripples, the paddle blades winking fast in the sunlight. Then it darted
out of sight around a turn.
A chorus of chuckles sounded on the shore where the five watched the
flight.
"And so the River of Missing Men sends back two more bold hearts,"
laughed Knowlton. "They'll have a brave tale to tell when they return to
San Regis."
"The river has not yet returned them to that town," suggested Rand.
"Meanin' they may git swallered by somethin' before they git clear?"
guessed Tim. "Begorry, they might, at that. If them white Injuns catch
'em foul they'll be out o' luck. Serves 'em good and right, too, the
dirty cache-robbers!"
"I have a feeling, comrades, that we have not yet seen the last of that
pair," José somberly stated. "I wish I had them under my thumb--or that
my old rifle had accidently exploded when it pointed at the Moyobambino.
But they are gone, and we waste time here."
McKay nodded and gestured toward the canoes. With one more keen look at
the surrounding bush and a swift survey to make sure nothing was
overlooked on the ground, the voyagers returned to their respective
boats. A little later the bowlders around which had centered
treasure-hunting, peril, capture, theft, mockery, and fear, were alone
once more in a stretch of empty river.
A mile upstream the five spotted men slowed their strokes. Before them
rose more rocks. Like the first obstructions, however, they were few,
and not high enough or close enough to cause much difficulty to canoes.
But before traveling much farther every man needed to get into the tins
which had just been saved from the clutches of the Moyobambino. Their
stomachs were empty and their cartridges few.
So, beyond the bowlders, they halted. José, watching the flat boxes of
cartridges emerge from one of the ammunition tins, smiled wryly.
"I should have brought with me a tin box like yours, amigos," he said.
"Or else I should have remembered to find some bullets before leaving
our Indian friends. Now all the cartridges they took from me are
exploded in the fire I set, and I have only five left in all the world.
Señor Dave, you must make for me a bow and some arrows."
Rand smiled and shook his head.
"Not unless we've lost a can," he said. "Tim, is the forty-four tin
still there?"
"Uh-huh. Safe and solid. Wait a minute, Hozy, ol'-timer, and I'll give
ye all the cannon balls ye want."
To the Peruvian's amazement and joy, he was speedily presented with a
clean, dry carton of the heavy bullets that fitted his gun.
"Trade stuff," McKay explained. "We don't use forty-four caliber
ourselves, but it's so commonly used in the jungle that we brought a
batch of it over the Andes. Lots of times a few forty-four slugs will
buy more than you could purchase with five times their value in money."
"True, capitán. And to me they are worth more than all the gold that may
be ahead. Now that I have them, I am curious to know whether that path
of the white Indians still follows this stream upward. So I will take a
little walk over yonder while you open some food."
Dumping his ammunition into his capacious right-hand pocket, he shoved
his canoe across the stream, climbed the bank, and disappeared.
"Queer thing about that path," remarked Rand. "It's a good deal older
than the clearing and the tribe-house of the Indians back yonder. Been
here longer."
The others frowned thoughtfully. Their eyes, though experienced by
previous jungle travel, were not trained to note the slight
differentiations which were so obvious to the former wild man; but even
they had noticed that the tribe house seemed quite new. Now, while they
labored with can-openers and gouged beef out of the cans, they pondered.
"Ol' Injun trail, prob'ly," hazarded Tim. "Been used a hundred years,
mebbe, by the wild guys travelin' up and down."
"Quite likely. Wish my leg was in good hiking condition. I'd like to
leave the canoes and hit the trail. It probably goes to where we're
heading for, and canoeing will be work from now on."
"Yeah? 'Tain't been work up to here, o' course not. But I'm game to
stick to these here dugouts a long while before I make meself an army
jackass and buck the bush with tin cans hung all over me. Besides, we
dunno if that path does go to the right place--might lead us right into
some head-hunter town. Nope, me for the river as long as she holds out.
And I'm goin' to use some of it right now."
Wherewith he began scrubbing the sweat-streaked talcum powder and the
dye-spots from his face. The others followed his example--but not all at
once. Rand and Knowlton waited, with hands on rifles and eyes scanning
water and tree line, until the other two were through with their
ablutions. Then they took their turn, while their clean-faced companions
watched.
"Funny we don't hear nothin' from Hozy, cap," muttered Tim. "Thought
he'd be right back."
McKay made no answer. But his eyes rested on the Peruvian's canoe,
noting that its owner, with habitual caution, had left it under some
drooping ferns which would mask it from above. Then they roved up the
creeping water, pausing at a spot some rods farther on, where other
ferns formed a good covert. As Rand and Knowlton lifted their wet faces
he pointed upstream.
"We'll move up there," he said. After a look at him and at the bank, the
others dipped their paddles. The twin dugouts slid across and upward and
floated under cover.
The lieutenant lifted inquiring brows, getting in return a noncommittal
wave of the hand. For a little time all sat in silence. All at once Rand
grew tense.
His fingers tightened over his rifle. He leaned a little forward, all
his senses concentrated into listening. To the ears of the others came
no new sound: no sound whatever, unless it was a barely audible rustle
which held a moment, then died, like the soft sigh of a passing breeze.
But Rand's head slowly turned, following that tiny, murmur downstream.
After it had died away he still held that alert poise.
Presently his gaze swung to the faces of his companions, who were
watching him keenly. Soundlessly his lips formed one word:
"Men!"
McKay pointed a thumb backward, mutely asking if the men had gone down
the river. The ex-roamer of the jungle nodded.
All watched toward the rocks below. No sight or sound of human life
came. From where they lurked they could not see the empty canoe of José.
In every mind grew the same question: what had become of him?
At length the question was answered. Stealthy dips of a paddle floated
to them, and a ripple curved along the water. The bow of the outlaw's
canoe appeared, hugging the shore. Above it moved a black-haired head,
minus the piratical red handkerchief. Stroking carefully, José slipped
up to them.
"Por Dios, you are wise, capitán!" he whispered. "You shifted in good
time. I could not get back to warn you, and I have been sweating blood,
expecting to hear you attacked.
"The path is there, amigos. It is close to the water along here. And
down it have just gone thirty Jiveros! The head shrinkers!"
CHAPTER XIII
FOLLOWED
McKay reached to the newly opened ammunition tin.
Silently he extracted box after box of soft-point cartridges and passed
them to his companions. With equal silence each of the Americans
received the flat packets, slit the thin paper seals with a thumb-nail,
turned back the covers, and placed the boxes on the bottoms of the
canoes, the grim brass heads ready within instant reach. Boxes of
forty-fives followed, and the spare clips of the belt guns were given
quick but thorough inspection. Finally Tim beckoned José closer, and,
with a muffled grunt, lifted the entire case of forty-fours into the
outlaw's craft.
"They're yourn," he stage-whispered.
The Peruvian made no reply in words, but his shining eyes spoke for him.
So did the swift swoop of his hand into the tin and his affectionate
gaze at the cartons of death-dealing cylinders he brought forth. But he
wasted no time in gloating over his treasure. After exposing the shining
discs and the dull gray leads to the sun he turned and watched
downstream.
Minutes dragged away while the hidden five squatted under the ferns,
holding the canoes motionless by gripping the bank, straining eyes and
ears for sight of savage figures near the rocks or for any returning
rustle. Then José let his gaze wander to the opened beef tins.
"I believe, señores, we halted here to eat," he suggested.
The broad hint met with immediate response. Hands relaxed from their
grips on the guns, and the guns themselves were laid softly down. A
minute later every one was wolfing food.
"No smoking," refused McKay, as Tim, after devouring his meat and
gulping a gourd of river water, reached for his "makings." The big
freckled hand hesitated, then reluctantly came away from the shirt
pocket.
"Dang it, I ain't had a drag since last night," grumbled the red man.
"Say, are we goin' to keep duckin' and hidin' and goin' without smokes
on account of a bunch o' bare-backed boobs like them there, now,
Jiveros? Me, I don't like this scairt-cat stuff. Wade into 'em and blow
'em wide open if they git sassy; that's my idea."
"Same here, if it would get us anything," replied Knowlton. "But until
we find something worth fighting over, what's the use? Use your head a
little if you want to keep it on your neck."
"Grrrumph!" growled Tim. But his hand went now to his paddle, not to his
tobacco. "No use hangin' round here. Le's go."
And, after another look around, they went: slowly, stealthily, with
open cartridge boxes beside them and rifles close at hand, but steadily
forging on up the forbidden water toward whatever lay beyond.
Though they now were afloat once more, they tacitly held to the same
formation in which they had traveled the trail that morning: José in the
lead, with Rand following in the bow of Tim's canoe, and the pair of
ex-officers trailing. The two jungle veterans thus were where their keen
senses were of most use, while the rest of the expedition was in
position for quick action toward front or rear. Yet, for all their
readiness, there seemed to be nothing to do but the everlasting
paddling. Since the passing of that sinister rustle in the western bush
no sight or sound of anything but animal or bird life had come to them.
As they went, the sharp eyes of McKay dwelt thoughtfully on Rand. He was
pushing his paddle as stoically as ever, and to all appearances his
stroke was as strong as if he had had both legs curled under him. But
the captain knew well that the lacerated limb was aching, and that the
forced journeys through the tangled forest had pulled the torn muscles
apart and undone whatever good had been accomplished by the first
rough-and-ready surgical attention.
He knew, too, that unless the claw wounds were given a fair chance to
heal there would be a cripple in his company for many days to come; and
that the day might not be far off when, notwithstanding his dogged grit,
that cripple's inability to handle himself with his normal ease might
plunge the whole party into irretrievable disaster. Humanitarian reasons
aside, it was imperative that the weak link in the chain be made strong
again. Rand must lie up.
But he could not lie up in the moving canoe. Not only would this throw
all the work of propelling that dugout on Tim, but if a real mal-paso
should be encountered he would have to take to his legs with the rest
while the boats were dragged and poled upward. Moreover, another band of
savages using that hidden trail--or perhaps the same band
returning--might at any time see and attack the expedition. Finally, the
stubborn pride of the man himself would not let him rest unless the
others also halted. Wherefore the only solution was to find a covert
where a secret camp could be constructed and all hands could take a few
days of ease.
So, saying nothing, the commander renewed his study of the slowly
passing shores. Now and then he halted his paddle and scrutinized some
indentation or dried-up brook mouth; but only for a minute. The canoes
crawled on for some distance before he saw what he sought.
Then, on the eastern shore, a fair-sized creek opened. After a quick
survey McKay spoke to Knowlton, and the canoe surged ahead at double
speed, closing in on José.
"Think we'll look at that creek," said the captain. "First, take another
look at the trail--see if it's still there. Then hunt for another on the
other shore."
The Peruvian swung his bow inward, picked a landing spot, and slipped
away among the leaves. Rand's eyes followed him. Knowlton's turned to
McKay with a look of inquiry. The captain rolled a thumb toward Rand's
back, then touched his own leg. The blond man's quick nod showed that
his thoughts had been traveling in the same channel.
José returned, reporting that the path still ran beside the water and
that it showed no sign of use since the Jiveros had gone downstream. At
once the canoes crossed and entered the creek. There José disappeared
for a longer time, exploring the shores of the new stream. At length he
stepped out of the tangle with news.
"There is no path here, at least near the water," he declared. "And this
water is no real creek. It is only the outlet of a lago--how big I do
not know, but only a little way up."
"All right. Let's inspect it."
The black eyes of the outlaw hung on the gray ones a moment, mutely
puzzled. But he asked no question. Into his short craft he got, and up
along the almost motionless arm of water he led the way. He knew his
capitán well enough to realize that this was no thoughtless waste of
time and effort. Tim and Rand, too, wondered but held their tongues.
The waterway curved from northeast to north, cutting off all view of the
Tigre Yacu. Only a few hundred yards from the river it opened into a
lake, perhaps a mile long, rimmed with wide sandy shores from which rose
stiff slopes of heavy timber. Nowhere on its placid bosom nor on its
gleaming sands showed any sign of humanity.
"Will do," McKay asserted.
"For what?" demanded Rand.
"For a hangout," enlightened Knowlton.
"What's the big idea?" Tim wanted to know.
"Here you can smoke," said McKay, his face relaxing.
"Huh? Say, I'll do that li'l' thing right now!" And in three-fifths of a
second the tobacco-hungry paddler's pouch was in service.
"We'll lie up here a few days," McKay went on. "A little rest will do us
all good."
"And that ain't no lie," affirmed Tim. "But what makes ye so merciful
all to once? Got religion or somethin'?"
"Look here, Rod, am I holding the gang back?" Rand sharply asked. "If
that's your idea I won't----"
"Yes, you will," McKay coolly contradicted. "You'll stick with the gang,
and the gang halts here."
"But----"
"No argument, Dave. Your leg's bad. It's got to get well as fast as
possible. We want no lame ducks. You've got to lie up."
"And eat up all our grub----"
"We'll get more grub here. Turn the little twenty-two gun loose on
monkeys, jerk the meat, save our canned stuff. May lay in a stock of
fish, too. There's plenty of salt."
"Sí," José approved, scanning the sandy shores. "And this sand should be
full of turtle eggs. The water must hold many fish. Those heavy woods
beyond will mean easy hunting and good hiding. You could not have chosen
a better place, capitán."
Rand's mouth remained set, but he was silenced. Tim, with a sidelong
wink at Knowlton, shoved on his paddle, and the Rand-Ryan boat moved
onward. After a few more strokes from the stern, Rand began to ply his
own blade.
A little way down, on the right shore, a sandy spit ran out into the
water. Beyond it the five found a small cove. There they ran the canoes
aground, and José and Tim were first to debark.
José, as scout, stepped off across the sand toward the steep bluff
which, in the wet season, evidently formed the rim of the lake, but
which now was some fifty yards distant. But he did not step far. All at
once he bounded into the air, whirling like a cat, and ran for the lake.
Knee-deep in the water he stopped, spluttering a hodgepodge of Spanish,
Indian, and English profanity.
"What the----" Tim began. Then he sharply picked up one booted foot,
hopped off the other as if stung, caught his balance, and rushed to join
José.
"Holy sufferin' cats!" he blurted. "This is some swell place ye picked
out, cap! Ouch! Oo-ee! Cripes, I bet me boots are gone!"
The three still in the boats stared up the sand. From it radiated
intense heat, but nothing moved on it.
"What's the matter?" demanded Knowlton.
"Matter! Git ashore and ye'll find out! That there stuff ain't jest
sand. It's the top lid o' hell!"
"Oh. Hot, eh?"
"Hot! Aw, no. Git out and set down on it a few minutes, looey. G'wan! Ye
dassn't!"
"You're right. I dassn't," grinned the lieutenant. "Sorry, José. You
must have caught it badly with no boots on."
José, with lurid emphasis, assured him that he was burned to the bones.
But after the water had cooled his suffering feet he flashed a grin.
"I wish, amigos, I had my Moyobambino pet here now," he chuckled. "I
would ride on his back. How he would prance! Hah!"
"Mebbe he's dead already, and them hundred thousand friends o' his have
lit extry bonfires to welcome him," suggested Tim. "Anyways, this sure
is the top crust of his winter home. Me, I'm goin' somewheres else."
He wallowed into his canoe, where he stared at his boots as if
astonished to find them still on his feet. José also tugged his bow off
the sand and stepped in.
"It is the sun," he explained. "On a cloudy day, or in the morning, one
could walk here without trouble; but not now. All sand soaks up sun
heat, but some sand is worse, and this is the worst I ever met. If we
stay in this place we must find a shorter way to the trees. There is
one, on the other side. See."
Following his pointing finger, the rest saw a spot where a deep
indentation gave a water path to within a few yards of the tree growth.
Pushing out, they passed over to it. The water shoaled to finger depth
at a distance of ten feet or more from the edge of the beach, making a
poor landing, but the space of hot sand intervening was so short that,
with boots wet, it could be traversed without much discomfort. So there
they debarked.
McKay and Knowlton loped across the sand to the bush, arriving with feet
hot but not painful. A short scout revealed nothing but animal sign.
Returning, they brought strips of flexible but tough bark and some
bush-cord, which they presented to José. The Peruvian, sitting in the
water, fell to work binding the bark to his feet as protective coverings
to his tender soles. Tim and Rand, after a thorough soaking of their
boots, made a quick trip arm-in-arm across the hot space. Then Tim
returned, picking up his feet with unusual spryness.
Half an hour later a camp had been made at a little distance from the
entry cove and skillfully camouflaged with big leaves, and to it all the
outfit except the canoes themselves was transported. Later on, when the
sand could be crossed with impunity, the boats would be shifted to a
better berth; but now they were left stranded in the shallows. Rand's
leg was dressed anew by Knowlton, who was more deft at such work than
the others, and he lay in his hammock, solacing himself with a
cigarette.
Then, all at once, the hand holding the cigarette stopped in air. Into
his face came that look of concentrated listening. José, too, turned
from something he was doing and cocked an ear toward the river. The
others glanced at one another and stood motionless.
The Peruvian shot a look at Rand. Then he picked up his gun and vanished
among the trees. To the waiting four presently came a sound--a swishing,
pelting sound which grew into a murmur, as if men were running and
breathing in hoarse gasps.
A sudden nearer rustle, and José burst out of the forest.
"Peace is not for us, amigos," he panted, with a hard grin. "That tribe
of accursed white Indians is coming!"
CHAPTER XIV
BURNING SANDS
"Aw, rats!" snorted Tim, seizing his rifle. "There ain't no rest for the
wicked, as the feller says. Jest when we git comfortable them guys horn
in again. This ain't goin' to be no fun, either--not unless they've dug
up weppins somewheres. Too much like killin' sheep."
The other Americans, too, though swift to arm themselves, scowled as if
facing a disagreeable task. Not so José. His pride still rankled at the
memory of having been trapped so easily and driven like a beast to a mud
pen, and now, finger on trigger, he looked vengefully back as if
awaiting the appearance of the leader who had flung his knife so
contemptuously on the dirt and invited him to commit suicide.
When that leader did come loping into sight, however, the Peruvian stood
stock still. Not only was the Indian weaponless and darting glances from
side to side like a hunted thing, but he was followed by gasping women
and children.
At sight of the five whites aligned beside their hidden hut and the five
deadly muzzles menacing his breast he stopped as if shot. The running
horde behind struck him and knocked him forward, reeling and clutching
for support. One hand caught a tree and saved him from sprawling. He
snarled something over his shoulder. The human herd slowed to a halt.
For a second the women and children stared at the hard, bearded faces
fronting them--faces now without a vestige of the horrible pallor and
virulent spots which had been there that morning. Then their heads
turned back, and from them broke whimpers of terror. Behind them sounded
the hoarse voices of their men, urging them on. But again the leader
snarled, and instead of pressing forward they passed back his words.
"You fools!" McKay rasped. "Why do you follow us?"
"We do not follow," the Spanish-speaking Indian retorted. "We seek
safety for our women and children. Death comes behind."
"What death?"
"The men who shrink the head. They found us helpless. They follow to
take our heads and our women. Let us pass on. Or kill us quickly, before
they come."
He glanced back, but his face held no fear. He seemed only coolly
gauging the pursuit. When he turned again his eyes held a malevolent
glow, and the thin smile glimmered across his mouth.
"We cannot live," he ground out. "But you who destroyed us go to death
with us. Your heads hang with ours. Bueno!"
Though he spoke an alien tongue, the women behind moaned as if they
understood; as if they were visioning the massacre of their men and
their own slavery. At that sound the hard-set faces of the five turned
harder. Even José, looking at the children, clenched his teeth.
Every man of them knew the Jiveros were inveterate polygamists; that
their killings were actuated even more by greed for woman slaves than by
cupidity for the grisly trophies of war; that it would be more merciful
to shoot down these women and girls now than to let them fall into such
hands. They knew, too, that the Indian spoke truth when he cast on their
shoulders the blame for the present defenselessness of his people, and
that he voiced no idle threat when he predicted doom for all.
"By cripes, I don't care what happens to these guys--they would have
killed Dave," Tim blurted. "But the women and kids----"
McKay's voice cut in.
"Do as I say and you may live. Run on a little way. Turn to the water
and run back through the trees at the edge. Do not step on the sand
until you see us at our canoes. Come to us there. We will fight for you.
Quick! Go!"
The other's mouth twisted in disbelief. These gun bearers, who had been
their prisoners, would fight for them? No hope of that! But, as
drowning men clutch at straws, he grasped at even that hopeless chance.
As the imperative commands snapped in his ears and the guns sank he
bounded forward. Automatically he obeyed McKay's pointing finger,
indicating the rear of the hut. Around the shelter he plunged, pressed
close by the fugitives blindly following his lead.
"José! Get back and watch for Jiveros!" barked McKay. "When you see them
don't shoot--run back here. Dave, hop to the canoes! Tim--Merry--bear a
hand on these cases. Snap into it!"
Without a pause to watch the passing horde he leaped into the hut and
clutched a couple of heavy containers, with which he plowed toward the
canoes. Hard on his heels came his two able-bodied mates, each carrying
all he could snatch and hold. Rand, lugging the rifles, limped rapidly
in their wake.
Meanwhile José, slipping swiftly along the disordered column, found
himself obliged to draw off to one side if he was to spy Jiveros instead
of fighting his recent captors. The women and children, obsessed by
fear, gave him hardly a passing glance. But the men, following behind in
position to do their desperate best when the pursuers should overtake
them, saw in him the living reason why they now were fleeing instead of
battling their foes with gun and spear and bow. They did not know he was
truly the man who had thought of destroying their fortress and had put
that thought into execution; if they had, not all the head-hunters in
the jungle would have kept them from hurling themselves on him with
their only weapons--bare hands or crude clubs wrenched from prone trees.
Even as it was, the bold stare and mocking grin of the outlaw enraged
them to the point of striking at him if he came within reach. So,
keeping in mind his duty, he gave them plenty of room and sped on to the
rear.
There, last of all, he found the chief, loping onward with frequent
backward looks and grimly clutching a formidable tree branch. Coward
though he might have been that morning when confronted by dread specters
of disease, he now was all man, guarding the exodus of his fallen tribe
and holding himself ready to fight and fall first when the relentless
death behind should strike. And the outlaw, reading his face, ceased
grinning and gave the ruler a friendly nod. His answer was a hollow-eyed
glare.
The retreating line faded away. The Peruvian posted himself behind a
tree at the edge of the new trail and waited.
Back at the canoes, the Americans dropped their burdens and shoved the
dugouts into water deep enough for floating. McKay glanced along the
bank. A short distance farther on, a bush swayed sharply, struck by a
speeding foot. The Indian had obeyed orders, turned, and started back
just at the edge of the sand.
"Time for one more load," the captain judged. "Merry and Tim, back to
the hut! Dave, hold her ready to go. I'll have to boss this gang."
The blond and the red man, with pistol holsters unbuttoned, raced back
across the burning sands. They had hardly disappeared into the bush when
the head of the Indian line broke out behind them. McKay beckoned
imperatively. The leader made straight for him.
He was halfway across the hot grit before his face contracted with pain.
But his stride never wavered; he only jumped ahead like a spurred horse.
A couple of seconds later he was ankle-deep in the cooling water and
barking at the women, who had begun to cry out and hesitate on the
scorching surface. Between the goad of his voice and the momentum of the
following mass, the waverers were propelled onward into the shallow
water lane.
The whole column followed fast. Soon all the fugitives were packed
together in the inlet, and the grim chief was forcing his way through to
learn from the young guide why they were here in the open, easy prey for
the impending attack.
The guide had halted beside McKay and demanded the same information. Was
this a cruel white-man trap, calculated to destroy their last chance of
life? He snapped the question with savage brevity. With equal curtness
McKay snapped back at him the answer to the riddle.
Sudden hope flared in the tawny eyes watching his. As the chief reached
him and growled a wrathful query he translated the white man's talk into
the Indian tongue. The tribal ruler, his feet still hot, threw a quick
look at the sand, another at the point in the bush where the tribe had
doubled on its trail, and a third at the water line stretching away.
Then his hard gaze bored into McKay's face.
"You are at our backs," he pointed out, his voice rough with hostile
suspicion. "Your guns at our backs, Jiveros at our faces."
"I know it, you fool!" shot the captain. "I will do what I say. Take it
or leave it. We go."
At that moment Knowlton and Tim came careening out with more cans. They
jostled past, thumped their burdens into the canoes, and hopped in after
them.
"Better beat it, Rod!" called Knowlton.
"José coming?"
"Not yet, but time's short. Where do we go from here?"
"Hold up a minute." Then, to the chief: "Your life or death is in your
own hands. Do as you wish."
With which he shouldered his way out of the press, ran to his canoe,
jumped in, and commanded: "Paddle!"
The two dugouts slid outward, leaving the little canoe of José empty and
waiting. A couple of young bucks grabbed it. McKay dropped his paddle
inboard and swung on them with rifle aimed.
"Hands off!" he barked. "The man taking that canoe dies!"
The guide and the chief grunted together. The pair lifted their hands
from the canoe and sullenly swung toward their commanders. At once the
chief began loping outward, feet in the water, at the very edge of the
sand. The rest followed.
At the mouth of the inlet the canoes swerved to the left and glided
along the lake, near shore. At the same point the chief turned and ran
on in the same direction. A short distance up-lake the boats slowed and
stopped. The fugitives, following, splashed up to them, still only
ankle-deep. The chief halted and gave gruff orders.
His people drew together, standing at the water line, facing the jungle,
which seemed to quiver in the heat waves ascending from the intervening
sand. Behind them the canoes crept up and grounded.
"Here's the dope," McKay explained. "Jiveros, following trail, turn at
that place over yonder. Trail runs back along shore. But they see their
victims out here, unarmed, helpless, making a last stand. Naturally they
don't loop back along the shore line--they come straight out to get
these fellows. They don't see us. Between them and us are forty yards of
blistering sand. By the time they----"
"Here's Hozy!" Tim broke in.
José was dashing at top speed from the tree line. He tore across the
sand, bounded through the water, leaped in air and alighted in his canoe
with a fierce down-drive of the legs that shot the craft outward and sat
him down in the same instant. His paddle darted out and lashed the water
in tremendous strokes even before he got to his knees. Thereafter he
fairly lifted the boat along toward the waiting group.
"Whew! Some getaway!" breathed Knowlton. "Our guests must be arriving."
"Get my idea?" demanded McKay.
"Sure," was the answering chorus. "And it's a peach!"
José slowed to a stop beside the rest.
"They come, amigos," he panted. "They are----"
"All right, listen a minute!"
Swiftly the plan of battle was outlined to him. His face cracked in a
ferocious grin. Without another word he scooped up extra cartridges and
stepped over the side, knee-deep. The others also slipped overboard and
crouched.
To the Indian who spoke Spanish, McKay gave brief instructions. He
grunted them rapidly to the savages standing before the knot of gunmen.
Barely had he finished when a mutter of mingled rage and fear ran down
the line.
It was swallowed up by an outbreak of exultant yells from the trees.
Over there beyond the dancing heat waves a band of painted men, naked
but for maroon loin clouts, broke cover. All were light-skinned,
fierce-faced, equipped with jungle weapons and wooden shields. They
pointed, gesticulated, howled in gloating glee at the sight of the
almost unarmed men and the huddling women and girls waiting desperately
at the water's edge. Their quarry was run down at last. Heads for the
taking--women for the clutching--a revel of butchery and a Jivero
holiday!
Out upon the sand they sprinted, vying with one another for first blood
and first slave. The waiting victims cast anxious glances back at their
new allies and took heart. The white men were tense, ready, peering
through the fringe of naked legs concealing them, holding their fire.
Five--six--seven yards out--the first Jiveros began to bound higher and
glance down at their feet. Ten yards--sharp grunts of startled pain
broke from them. Twelve--fifteen--the grunts rose into yelps and yowls.
The leaders tried to swerve aside.
They collided with one another, tripped, stumbled, and sprawled on the
burning sand. Then they screeched.
An answering screech came from the water's edge--a shrill scream of
laughter from José. Like a flash it ran along the line of fugitives
standing cool-footed in the water. They howled and roared and twittered
and squeaked, man and woman and child pointing derisive fingers at
their foes. That ridicule stung more sorely even than the furnace below.
The Jiveros, red mad with rage and pain, leaped forward again.
As they came they loosed a wild volley of arrows. The laughter ceased
abruptly. In the waiting line men slumped down and lay still, long
shafts protruding from their bodies.
"Now! Open!" roared McKay.
The Indian leader howled the command in his own tongue. Before the
masked battery of white men a gap sprang open, Indians plunging to right
and left. Through that gap darted flame spurts and crackling reports.
The foremost Jiveros, now only twenty yards away, sprawled again. This
time they did not rise.
The clatter of four breech bolts and of one lever action rattled out.
Then another swift rip of gunfire, terminating in the sulphurous bang of
José's .44. Five more blood-mad slayers dropped on the sizzling sand.
The rest, shocked through with sudden fear at finding guns belching
death into them, dug in their heels and stopped. But they could not stop
long. The burning pain at their feet bit deeper. And in the instant of
their pause the guns spat a third time.
The soft thumps of more bodies striking earth, the intolerable torment
under foot, the swift realization that water and relief and their
enemies all were nearer now than the trees, stabbed the killers into
final fierce attack. Frothing, screeching, the survivors jumped ahead,
throwing spears and whirling war clubs. In another crash of flame and
smoke five more of them pitched headlong and died.
One more clatter--one more rip and bang--then the gunmen sprang up,
reaching for their pistols. The last five Jiveros of the thirty-strong
band were almost upon them.
But the hand-guns remained silent. In a sudden pounce the men of the
white Indians hurled themselves on the remnant of their foes. Without a
signal, without plan, without reason except the simultaneous primal
impulse to avenge themselves on the merciless creatures who had harried
them through the jungle and who now were within arm's length, the men
who had just been the hunted became the killers. With tree-branch club,
with fist and nail and tooth, they battered and tore those last Jiveros
into mangled pulp.
The burning sands, only a moment ago alive with charging head-hunters,
now were belted from bank to water with contorted bodies. Along that hot
lane of death nothing moved. The Jivero band was wiped out.
CHAPTER XV
JOSÉ TAKES A CHANCE
The white men, watching the ferocious annihilation of the few remaining
warriors, backed away and reloaded their rifles.
"A wolf pack," McKay warned. "Look out they don't turn on us. Get
aboard."
A wolf pack it seemed, indeed, when it drew away from the corpses it had
made from fighting men. Gashed, bruised, bloodied by the last desperate
thrusts and blows of the head-hunters and by injuries inflicted on one
another in the savage melee, it glared hotly around as if seeking fresh
objects on which to vent its fury. But, now that it had made its kill,
the pack speedily cooled. Perhaps the steady stare of the white men and
the silent menace of ready rifle muzzles peering over the canoe gunwales
aided the cooling.
For a long, quiet minute savage and civilized men looked one another in
the eye. Then the chief stepped forward, harsh, grim, barbaric, streaked
with red from a deep slash down one cheek, but holding up a friendly
hand. In tones far more mellow than the whites had heard from him
heretofore, he spoke at some length. As he finished, he waved a hand
toward the women.
McKay made a sign of incomprehension. The chief looked about, seeking
his interpreter. With the same thought in mind, the Americans also
searched faces. Then Tim pointed.
"Tough luck," he said. "We'll never know what this guy's tryin' to tell
us. Lookit there."
Huddled in the shallow water lay the chief's right-hand man: the only
one in his tribe who could speak Spanish. Through his throat, and out
from the back of his neck, jutted a Jivero spear.
With a sudden unintelligible sound, the chief sprang toward that
motionless figure. Dropping on one knee, he turned the face upward.
Despite the unmistakable deadliness of the wound, he seemed loath to
believe that the younger man was not still alive. Presently, however, he
slowly arose and stood staring out across the water as if unseeing. When
he turned back to his people his face was seamed with new lines.
José, watching, felt a sudden twinge of sympathy. Between those two must
have existed a closer bond than that of chief and subject.
"Hijo?" he asked.
The somber Indian gave no sign that he heard. McKay, who had picked up a
few words of the Quichua tongue in the Andes, repeated the question in
that language.
"Churi? Son?"
The hollow eyes turned to his.
"Zapai churi," he croaked. "My only son."
The captain nodded and strove to express condolence; but the effort was
fruitless, for the requisite Quichua was not in his vocabulary. The
chief, however, seemed to understand. He spoke again, a short sentence
in which McKay recognized the words "iscun" and "ushushi," and motioned
again toward the women, a number of whom now stood staring sorrowfully
at the dead guide.
"Chief has nine daughters," he translated. "But his only son is dead.
Too bad. I rather liked that young chap. Well, we may as well go back to
camp and get the rest of our stuff. May be more Jiveros along later."
"Not unless another band is out," José disagreed. "None of these
escaped."
"Sure?"
"Certain, capitán. I made it my task to watch those nearest the bush and
to shoot some who tried to turn back. There is none to carry news of
us."
"Good head!" Knowlton complimented. "You're a cool one, José. Well, Rod,
I don't see any necessity for abandoning our camp. These chaps aren't
likely to bother us after what we've done for them, even if we did burn
their house a while ago. Tell 'em to beat it, and we'll resume
housekeeping in our new jungle-bungle-o."
McKay considered. The white Indians, who now owed their lives to them,
were hardly to be regarded longer as enemies. Moreover, even if devoid
of gratitude they would not be so senseless as to attempt an attack on
the riflemen whose prowess now was ineradicably fixed in their memories.
Rand's leg, too, must be worse than ever by this time. And they needed
the jerked meat they had planned to get.
"All right. But we'll have to shift camp," he compromised. "Plain trail
leads to it now, thanks to the feet of this gang. We'll go back there
for the present. After we've shooed these people out we'll make another
camp farther along."
The three canoes floated backward, turned, and journeyed to the inlet.
More slowly, the Indians came swashing behind, a long stoical file, the
women watching the gliding dugouts of the bearded outlanders, and the
men carrying the bodies of their fellows who had gone down before Jivero
arrow or spear.
The end of the homeless procession passed the spot where sprawled the
disfigured bodies of the head-hunters last to die. It receded down the
edge of the scorching sand which had slowed the enemy attack and aided
the straight-shooting whites to annihilate the assailants. Then through
the heat quivering over the battlefield came a swift rush of wings. On
the motionless Jiveros settled the black army of the upper air, which
had been gathering from the four quarters since the first rifle volley,
and which now fixed rending beak and talon in the fallen.
Again the canoes grounded at the shallow end of the water lane. José
hopped out, thoughtfully watched the approaching horde, glanced at the
stretch of sand, and spoke.
"Halt them here, capitán. They move slowly with their dead; and the feet
of the young are tender."
While the others looked puzzled, he sprinted across the hot space and
was gone among the trees. Then from the bush came sounds of a chopping
machete.
"Huh! Funny sort of a galoot, ain't he?" queried Tim. "He's goin' to
bridge over this sand, I bet, to save the tootsies o' them women and
kids. And yet he don't think no more o' killin' and maulin' men than o'
smokin' a cigarette. Dangerous as a tiger cat one minute and gentle as a
woman--a good woman--the next. Me, I'd let 'em blister every foot in the
crowd before I'd bother meself to help 'em out."
With which he belied his own words by legging it across the furnace to
aid José.
By the time the chief reached the halting place the pair were emerging
with great armfuls of poles and long palm leaves, with which they
rapidly threw a path of comparative comfort across to the head of the
inlet.
"Women and kids first!" commanded Tim. "This stuff'll shrivel up in no
time. Come on, make it fast!"
So, after the chief caught the idea and gave his orders, the weaker ones
of the tribe scampered along the green lane, which already was curling
up in the heat. After them the body bearers strode heavily. The men
behind got across as best as they could, for no more leaves were put
down for them. Last came the Americans, Rand trying not to limp, and the
other two carrying ammunition cases.
Back to the camp trudged the whites. And back to the camp the whole
homeless tribe flocked with them. For a minute or two, before giving
further attention to the Indians, the adventurers were busy glancing
over the effects which they had been compelled to leave behind.
"Jiveros found this place, all right," commented Rand. "See how the
stuff's been pawed over? But nothing's gone. They figured on looting the
shack on their way back with the heads and slaves."
"Prob'ly figgered to find our trail, too, after they cleaned up these
folks, and git some white-man ornaments," agreed Tim. "But say, cap,
what are these guys hangin' round for? If they think we're goin' to feed
'em and build a new house for 'em they better think again."
It was quite evident that the white Indians wanted something; or, at
least, that their chief did. He stood before the hut, grave eyes on the
bearded men, obviously awaiting a chance to speak. McKay turned to him
and pointed toward the river in a plain gesture of dismissal. But the
chief made no move. He looked calmly into each alien face in turn. Then,
in monotone, he talked.
What he said the five did not understand. The chief, seeing their blank
expressions, seemed to repeat. He pointed solemnly down at his dead son.
He pointed toward the women. He waved a hand along the line of white
men. Several times he reiterated two words: "Churi chascai."
McKay, frowning, fingered his jaw in perplexity.
"Don't get you," he confessed. "Only word I understand is 'churi'--son.
Anybody know what 'churi chascai' is?"
Nobody did. But Tim was, as usual, willing to take a chance.
"Mebbe 'chascai' is a gun," he hazarded. "We got guns. Mebbe he's tryin'
to tell us we're sons-o'-guns. That might be a big compliment in his
lingo."
Ludicrous as the suggestion was, nobody snickered. Tim, testing out his
wild guess, held up his rifle and raised his brows. The chief looked
bewildered, then made a sign of negation and patiently began repeating
his talk.
"That lets me out," confessed Tim. "Dave, try the ol' boy with some o'
yer Javary cannibal talk. Mebbe he'll understand that."
But the tribal ruler, listening to a series of monotonous gutturals from
the lips of the former Wild Dog, showed no comprehension.
"Wish we had a Quichua vocabulary along," Knowlton regretted. "The old
fellow wants something and intends to get it, and he evidently can talk
some Quichua, though I don't believe it's his usual language."
"Perhaps he knows the Tupi tongue spoken by the Amazonian Indians down
below," suggested José. "I can speak it, though not well. And I know
some Zaparo words also. Let us see." To the chief he spoke two words:
"Herayi? Niato?"
This time the chief understood.
"Niato," he repeated, nodding down at his son's body. "Noqui cunian."
"Ah," said José. "He speaks the Zaparo, but not the Tupi. He has just
said in Zaparo what he said before in Quichua: 'Son. My only son.'
Perhaps I can learn----"
The chief interrupted. With another slow wave toward the white men and
then toward the women, he said: "Acamia."
José started.
"Acamia?" he repeated incredulously, pointing to himself. "But no!"
The Indian nodded firmly. He pointed at the outlaw, then at each of the
Americans in turn. While José still stared, he spoke five words. Slowly,
shyly, five maidens came forward and stood beside him; graceful,
handsome girls, shapely, dark-eyed, smiling a little, coy but conscious
of their charms.
"Gee!" muttered Tim. "Look who's here! Funny I didn't see them li'l'
queens before. I must be gittin' nearsighted or somethin'."
Wherewith he gave the little bevy a wide grin. Five perfect sets of
teeth flashed a response. But, as the maidens let their deep eyes stray
along the other American faces, their smiles faded. Knowlton's
blond-bearded face was unresponsive, Rand's dark-haired jaw was
impassive, and McKay's black-whiskered countenance was cold.
"Acamia?" muttered the captain. "I don't know Zaparo, but I'll bet I
know what 'acamia' means."
"What?" queried Knowlton.
"Wait and see."
José, recovering himself, pointed to the ground and squatted. The chief
sank down into position for lengthy conference. Whereafter, by words and
signs frequently repeated, with pauses and puzzlings and new starts, a
laborious process of exchanging ideas proceeded.
After a time the three able-bodied Americans stirred.
"Looks like a protracted powwow," said Knowlton. "We'd better be making
ourselves useful as well as ornamental. Some of our cans are still
broiling out yonder, and time's getting away."
"Right," the captain agreed. "Dave, keep on sitting in your hammock and
twiddling your gun. We'll finish our moving."
Leaving their rifles with Rand, they returned to the canoes and loaded
themselves with the hot tins. Neither going nor returning did one of
them speak a word, though Tim broke into sudden chuckles at times.
Though none was positive, each had a strong suspicion regarding the
subject of the conference--a surmise amounting almost to knowledge.
Back at the camp they coolly busied themselves with preparations for
moving farther along, as McKay had intended. The Indians, standing about
in aboriginal patience, watched them and gave ear to the progress of the
difficult conversation between chief and outlaw. The five girls smiled
no more, but soberly contemplated the dead younger chief, lifting their
gaze now and then to see what the bearded men were about.
At length José and the tribal ruler arose.
"Comrades," the outlaw announced with a grin, "the words 'churi chascai'
and 'acamia' are not the same, but they mean the same thing to us now.
The chief who yesterday wanted us for victims now wants us as--acamia.
And the Zaparo word 'acamia' means 'son-by-marriage'!"
He paused dramatically. The Americans only nodded slightly, as if they
had known it all the time.
"Behold, amigos, our brides!"
With a mock-courtly gesture he indicated the five jungle beauties. His
partners complied, beheld, and looked back at him without facial change.
"Por Dios!" sputtered the exasperated Latin. "Are you sticks? Have you
no eyes--no hearts--no bowels--no----"
"We got plenty o' guts, feller, and we ain't blind," retorted Tim. "But
tell us somethin' new. We knowed that an hour ago."
"Sí? And you knew also that these are the highest and most beautiful
maidens of the tribe--the handsomest daughters of the chief himself?"
Eyes opened at this. José, having scored a sensation at last, recovered
his aplomb.
"Sí, of the chief!" he repeated. "So you did not suspect you were so
greatly honored. It is as I say. The chief--his name is Pachac--has
never created a son, and says that Piatzo--the Great Father, or
God--will give him only girls. So now that his only son is dead----"
"Hold on!" expostulated Knowlton. "You're stepping on your own foot. You
say he can't have sons, yet his only son is----"
José guffawed, drowning the rest.
"Ah yes, amigo," he laughed. "Yet it is true. What Piatzo would not do
for Chief Pachac, a Spaniard did. So says Pachac himself. Years ago a
Spanish adventurer fell into the hands of Pachac--and, when Pachac was
not looking, into the arms of one of the wives of Pachac. Where the
Spaniard afterward went the chief does not tell me, but from that wife
was born this man who now lies dead on the ground."
Looking down into the Spanish face of that dead man, the listeners
nodded.
"That explains a lot," said McKay. "Go on."
"Sí. That bold, lone devil of a Spaniard must have been a man after my
own heart--ready for love even in the jaws of death--a true son of the
Conquistadores! Hah! If we Spaniards were not so busy with blood and
gold we could people the world with men--fighting men! And Chief Pachac
knows it.
"He has seen what kind of son that white man gave him. He has seen us
white men kill six times our own number of Jiveros without winking an
eye. He has seen us, prisoners in a mud cell, outwit his whole tribe and
destroy his power. He is no fool, Pachac. Now he will make us all his
sons, and behind the protection of our guns he will make his tribe
strong again, and through us he will become the grandfather of many
man-children who will grow into great fighters against the accursed
shrinkers of heads."
There was a pause. Pachac and his winsome daughters and his broken
people watched the white men. The white men stared coolly back--except
Tim, who grinned and finally laughed outright.
"Gripes, if this ain't the limit!" he gurgled. "Ol' Lady Fate is sure a
funny ol' skate: throws ye into the fryin'-pan and then lets ye hop out
into a basket o' peaches. And if ye gobble the peaches, like as not they
sour on yer stummick."
McKay's mouth twitched.
"True. Especially the last part. José, we're highly honored and so on,
but we're here for gold, not girls. Tell the chief to trot along home."
"Madre de Dios! You refuse?"
"Speaking for Roderick McKay, I do. Every man can make his own choice."
"The gang sticks together," seconded Knowlton.
"But, capitán--amigos--comrades! These are no dirty brown women--their
skins are fairer than our own tanned hides! And if you have no fire in
your veins, think of the gold! By joining the tribe we increase our own
power. When they are strong again we lead them into the cordillera. We
go with fighting men of the jungle behind us----"
"And then what?" demanded the captain.
"We find the gold, and then----"
"That's it. Then?"
José cogitated.
"I see. You señores are of North America. With gold, you return to your
own land. You are not outlaws, like me, with no land to call home. To
go, you must abandon your new wives. You would not. So you will have no
wives. You will be free. I see."
His black eyes dwelt on his fighting mates, then on the handsome girls.
His head tilted, and a reckless smile grew on his face.
"You all refuse these girls?" he demanded.
Four nods answered.
"But you stay here until Señor Dave is strong and you have shot and
cured much meat?"
"Unless we have to move."
"If these people will be your friends you will not drive them from you?"
"Certainly not."
"Bueno!"
With that devil-may-care smile still stretching his mouth, he turned to
Pachac. Another conference ensued. At length the chief, after a dubious
pause, consented to something.
The girls looked startled. Then their teeth flashed again. But this time
the smiles were not for Tim or his countrymen. They were for José.
And José, with swaggering stride, stepped among them. He slipped sinewy
arms over the two nearest pairs of shapely shoulders, drew the giggling
girls masterfully to him, and grinned diabolically at the four "sticks"
from North America.
"Gracias!" he mocked. "As you have said, capitán, every man makes his
own choice. Since you scorn these little tigresses of the Tigre Yacu, I
take them all!"
CHAPTER XVI
THREE PASS OUT
"All right, old-timer," said Knowlton. "Sorry to lose you, but we wish
you luck."
"I am not so easily lost, señor," José laughed. "Remember that I started
up this Tigre Yacu before you did. And do not think that because I have
paused I have stopped."
McKay's jaw set.
"Meaning that you don't intend to stick by what you've done?" he
snapped. "If you only expect to amuse yourself a few days and then
desert these girls, you've stopped for good, as far as we're concerned."
The outlaw jerked his arms from their soft resting places and stepped
forward.
"Capitán, have care!" he warned. "I am not without honor. I abide by
what I have done. I do not desert my brides. But I do not desert my
quest. Nor do I desert my friends--so long as they _are_ my friends."
Eyes narrowed to slits, he watched McKay's grim face a moment. Then,
getting no answer, he went on, his voice turning harsh.
"No man who calls me traitor--no man who even thinks me traitor--can be
friend of mine. No man, friend or enemy, can tell me what I shall or
shall not do. If you do not want me with you longer, go your way--and
the devil go with you! But I have not stopped. Hah! No! And I have yet
to see the man who can stop me!"
A flush shot across McKay's face. Perhaps he had wronged José; but the
outlaw's volcanic retort was too hot to pass unchallenged. He stepped
forward. José instantly stepped to meet him.
Rand's voice, cold as a knife-edge, came between them.
"Cut it out!" he drawled. "You're both wrong. Going to fight like a
couple of fools? You make me sick."
Both slowed. Another step, and they paused. Behind José the Indians
stirred and looked at their chief. Behind McKay the Americans let their
hands sink to their holsters.
"Yeah," rumbled Tim. "What's the matter with ye? Hozy, lay off cap or
ye'll git all that's comin' to ye. Cap, jump Hozy and ye jump the whole
tribe--he belongs to 'em now. They're scrappers. Remember what they done
to them last Jiveros. Want to start another war before our guns git
cooled off?"
Common sense gripped both belligerents. They fronted each other, eye to
eye, but each saw in the other's face realization that he had spoken too
hastily.
"My fault, José," McKay coldly apologized. "I misunderstood."
"Es culpa mia," was the chill reply. "The fault is mine."
"Good enough. Now you're both right," came Rand's caustic comment. "Let
it go at that."
But, though the sudden gulf yawning between the two men had closed, a
split still existed: not only between the captain and the outlaw but
between Indians and whites. Standing solidly behind their chief, ready
to back him in anything he did, the men of the jungle now were also
solidly behind the new son of Pachac. The Americans were as doggedly
loyal to their own leader, right or wrong. What might have become a
harmonious alliance, even despite the refusal of the northerners to
accept membership in the tribe, now was merely a mutual tolerance. Saxon
pride and Spanish pride left the gap unbridged--with José on the other
side.
Now the Peruvian, ignoring McKay, somberly eyed the three men in the
hut. With resolute tread he strode forward, picked up his gun leaning
against a corner post, gathered his meager personal belongings under his
left arm, and stalked out.
"Señores," he stated with formal politeness, "it is a matter of regret
to me that our companionship ends. It is not by my choice that it does
end. But for the slur of your capitán it would not now be ended. My
intention was--but that does not matter. To you, Señor Knowlton--Señor
Rand--my old friend Tim--I wish all success. If at any time José
Martinez, the vile outlaw and deserter of women, can be of any aid to
you three, do not hesitate to call. Adios!"
Turning his back squarely on McKay, he faced the men of Pachac and
extended his gun arm toward the back trail. Pachac himself led off. The
line began to move.
Silently the white men watched them go: the barbaric chief, still
gripping his crude blood-stained club, belted with his sinister black
hair-girdle, followed by men bearing the corpse of his half son; the
naked, muscular warriors, some carrying the other bodies of their slain;
the fair-skinned daughters of the chief, looking wistfully back at the
motionless José but asking no questions; the other women, some young and
robust, some carrying babes on their backs, some bent from age and work;
the children, stoical as their elders. On into the dim shadows they
filed, heading back toward the desolate clearing where the remnants of
their plantation would yield them scant food. Then José moved.
Down the bank toward his little canoe he started without a backward
look. McKay, cold and straight, still stood where he had stopped after
the mutual apology which had not restored friendship. From the hut
behind him came no sound. But he felt three pairs of eyes on his
uncompromising back--eyes whose combined weight of disapproval hung
heavy on him.
"José!" he called.
José went stonily on. He faded among the trees. He was gone.
"And there," said Tim, morosely, "goes the feller that let us in on this
trip. The feller that tipped us off to the gold when we didn't know
there was any up here, and would fight for us till the last dog died, as
long's we didn't kick him in that sore pride o' his."
McKay faced about. The three pairs of eyes now were not on him. They
rested on the spot where the son of the Conquistadores had disappeared;
and they were grave.
"My fault," he conceded again. "But he's gone. There's nothing we can do
now but move camp as we intended. I'll scout around."
Rifle in hand, he went out alone into the bush. Knowlton hesitated,
frowning at the forest; then grabbed his own gun and followed him.
"Always together, them two," said Tim. "Merry wants to give cap a swift
kick, but he trails along jest the same. Dang it, Dave, cap's too sudden
sometimes. No need to jump in Hozy's face with both feet like that.
What's it to him what Hozy does? Me, I think Hozy's one wise guy."
Rand smiled slightly.
"Why didn't you take a couple of them yourself, then? You had your
chance."
"Aw, that ain't what I mean. I can git me a wife up home if I want one,
which I don't. But lookit the thing from Hozy's side. He's a lone wolf,
man without a country, too much of a he-man to set down in a town and
git fat and bald-headed even if he could go back. He belongs in these
here wild woods. Now he gits a whole armful o' swell girlies handed to
him, gits elected son of a chief and head of a bunch o' hard guys that
he can train into one fierce fightin' machine--why wouldn't he take it?
Better be a king among pigs than a pig among kings, as the feller says.
And them guys ain't no pigs, neither. He'd be a sufferin' idjut to turn
it down--him, a man with a price on his head and no place to go. Ain't
it so?"
The green-eyed man slowly nodded.
"Sure. And what's more, all that long conflab between him and ol'
Patch-Ike wasn't about girls," Tim continued. "Hozy's got his eyes
skinned all the time, and while he had the chief goin' he was gittin' a
lot o' dope about somethin'. About what? About what's ahead of us, most
likely: the gold and that wheel thing the young feller spoke about, and
what makes fellers crazy up here, and so on. If he didn't git all o'
that he got somethin', and he'd have shot the works to us if cap hadn't
gone off half-cocked. And now what do we know? Nothin'. And the only
wise guy in the outfit's gone, sore clear through. And I don't blame
him. Pfluh!"
He spat disgustedly. Rand said nothing. He knew Tim. He knew the
grumbling veteran would carry on as loyally as ever behind the captain
whom he now scored. He knew, too, that there was much truth in what Tim
said.
"And now here we are, without a guide or nothin', in the middle of a
howlin' wilderness o' head-hunters. If we ever git to that gold we'll
find li'l ol' Hozy and his new gang there ahead of us, I bet. And I bet
ye somethin' else--one o' these days, if he don't git killed first,
Hozy'll make himself the big noise around here. He ain't jest stoppin'
to fool round a few girls, like cap thought he was. He's lookin' way
ahead, figgerin' on things about 'steen jumps beyond where he is now.
You wait and see."
"Hope we live to see it."
"Yeah. Hope Hozy lives to see it, too. Wal, he's got our whole case o'
forty-fours to start his clean-up with, and if he gits a Jivero with
every shot he'll make head-hunters hard to find round here. And there
won't be none o' them what-ye-call-'em Bambinos in Hozy's country,
neither. Gee, I bet the first thing he does with his new gang is to
start 'em after that greasy trader that was swipin' our stuff. Hope he
gits him."
Wherein Tim erred on both counts--as he was to learn before dark.
Neither the case of ammunition nor the trader who had attempted to
appropriate it had gone as far as the Americans supposed. Nor was José
thinking of matters so trivial as a pursuit of the pair whom he had
scared away that day.
Down at the river he had expertly concealed his canoe and joined the
column fording the stream; and now, first in the line, heading even the
chief, he was stealing along like the jungle creature he was, his gun
ready to clear from the path any menace to the people who had taken him
to themselves. In his dark eyes burned a flame lit by thoughts known
only to himself: thoughts not of the Americans, not of the Moyobambino,
not even of his present position, but of the mysterious land to the
north. Truly, he had not stopped. But even he did not realize that he
had only just started.
Meanwhile, McKay and Knowlton were threading the tangle in their silent
scout. No word had been spoken between them concerning José, nor would
anything further on that subject be said for some time. In his heart the
stiff-backed captain was rebuking himself for his abruptness and
realizing to the full what a serious loss he had brought on the
expedition; but, even had it been possible, he would not have recalled
the Peruvian now.
Neither would he give up his purpose to go on into the sinister
cordillera toward which he had set his face. Not if all his comrades
turned back--not if he lost food and gun and clothing and had to attack
the jungle barehanded--not so long as one inch of progress and one
ounce of will remained in him, would he quit forcing his way onward.
When he could go no farther he would go down, face still to the front
and dead fingers clutching the ground ahead. That was McKay.
At length, some distance farther along the lake and well back, he paused
and scanned the ground around a small timbered knoll. Past the rise
flowed a tiny but clear brooklet. Primeval solitude, unmarked by the
feet of men, surrounded it. Game tracks were plentiful, and monkeys
flitted along the high branches. Meat, water, secrecy, all were there
for the taking. Glancing at his compass, he turned back into the
labyrinth, working toward the lake bank. The present camp would be
easier to find by following the top of that slope than by worming along
the devious way he had come.
A little later he and Knowlton emerged into a fresh path, showing marks
of many human feet. It was the trail left by the people of Pachac and
the pursuing Jiveros; the point where the fugitives had doubled back,
and where the head-hunters had later plunged straight out on the bare
sand. The ex-officers paused, stepped nearer to the edge, and looked
out.
The sand again was empty of life: the vultures had finished their work
and risen. Out there now lay only stripped bones, fleshless skulls,
scattered shields and spears and bows and clubs, surrounded by sinister
red patches. The eyes of the men at the top of the bank ranged out to
the water where they had crouched and shot. They returned, noting the
positions of the bones along that red trail. They glanced carelessly at
the path left on the slope itself. Then the pair turned away.
But they wheeled back. There, under a tree on that slope, they had seen
something: something hastily set down beside the path by Jiveros just
before charging out to kill and be killed. Their eyes widened. Then they
went down, picked up what they had found, and, walking with hands well
away from their sides, resumed their way to camp.
As they stopped beside the hut, up from the direction of the canoes came
Tim, puffing under the weight of a tin case.
"Say!" he panted. "Know what that proud fool of a Hozy done? Throwed
this can o' forty-fours back into our canoe. Took a few boxes, that's
all. The danged ol'----Huh! What ye got there? Cr-r-ripes!"
The officers set down their finds. Tim's mouth worked. Then the case of
cartridges slipped from his nerveless hands.
He was staring at the severed heads of the Moyobamba trader, Torribio
Maldonado, and his Indian satellite.
CHAPTER XVII
NORTH
A fire, carefully masked, glowed faintly at the top of the little knoll
back in the jungle. Dimly outlined by its vague glimmer, the columns of
near-by trees, large and small, rose into the upper dark and vanished
amid grotesque lianas and great drooping leaves. Among them, a scant
half-rod from the smoldering blaze, stood two straight young trunks
between which stretched a horizontal pole. Under the pole squatted four
men, smoking.
That pole was the front rafter of a carefully concealed hut: a hut
against whose other three sides leaned newly cut bushes and ferns and
whose roof-line was softened and distorted by cunningly spaced bumps and
slants and juts of palm leaf; a covert which even a jungle Indian might
have passed without seeing it, unless warned by the odor of smoke which
permeated the air even when no fire burned. The smoke tang clung both to
the soil and to close-hung strips of meat under the palm roof.
No Indian was near at present. But other jungle prowlers, as savage and
nearly as deadly, were restlessly moving around the camp. At times their
fierce eyes shone beyond the fire, and at other moments their snarls
and growls told of their baffled hunger for the meat which they smelled
beyond the men. Yet they held their distance, partly because of the
dread fire demon glowering at them and partly because even their
ferocious hearts had learned that here it was well to step warily.
They had learned, those tigres, that the man creatures now living here,
though clawless and gifted with no such fangs as theirs, possessed a
deadly power: that they could suddenly spit out a sharp crack which
struck their brothers dead. They had met men before, and more than one
of those men had fallen before their rending attack and gone down their
ravenous gullets. But those had not been such men as these; they had
been bare of body, beardless of face, able only to stab with spear or
arrow and then die. These new two-legged creatures not only would not be
eaten--they killed and ate the tigres themselves!
Yes, they were tiger eaters. They preferred other meat, such as monkeys
and birds and agoutis; but after they spat that flashing report at a
jungle king they stripped his flesh from his bones, ate what they
wanted, and salted and smoked the rest to add to the monkey haunches
dangling from their roof. And so, though the big cats nightly slavered
at the tantalizing tang which drew them there, they kept moving. And,
come when they might, they never could find that meat unguarded or all
the men asleep. Always one was there, alert and formidable.
For days now the camp had stood there. For days three of its men had
hunted in the surrounding tangle, killing as quietly as possible and
bringing back their prey to the hut where the fourth, who was lame, sat
with a gun close at hand. When their butcher work was done they had gone
with the fresh meat strips to the lake shore, where, on frames
constructed at the edge of the bush, they salted and dried their
provender and then brought it back to camp for a light smoking. And now,
thanks to skillful hunting, straight shooting, good luck and steady
work, they had tough meat enough to carry them many a hard mile onward
toward the cordillera.
Now, also, Rand's leg was again in condition for use. Careful dressing
and faithful though tedious resting had healed the wounds to such an
extent that now he not only could walk about but could even squat beside
his comrades in the nightly smoke talk--though he squatted on only one
heel instead of both. He was not yet in shape to buck a hard trail, but
by favoring the injured leg a bit he could do his full share of paddle
work. Moreover, he had no intention of lolling here longer. Already he
had demanded that the dugouts, which now were sunk in shallow water for
concealment, be raised and loaded and the journey resumed.
"Aw, don't git so hasty," complained Tim. "Ye've had it pretty soft
lately, but we ain't. We been pluggin' all day, every day, gittin' this
here grub ready. Me, I'm willin' to loaf a couple days meself now. How
'bout it, cap?"
"Wouldn't hurt to lie up one day, anyhow," McKay agreed, mindful of the
fact that the delay would heal Rand's injured leg just so much more.
"All hands rest until day after to-morrow."
Rand frowned, but gave no further sign of impatience. He puffed again on
his cigarette and glanced at the vanishing gleam of a tiger's eye in the
black bush beyond. The others also had caught that gleam, but they made
no move. So accustomed to the cordon of cats had they become that they
paid little more attention to it than to the ever-present
mosquitoes--unless the animals grew too aggressive. They smoked on in
silence for a time.
"D'ye know, I can't git that Bambino feller's head out o' me mind," Tim
declared presently. "Keeps comin' back to me. I seen all kinds o' dead
men over in France, and plenty here in South Ameriky, too, and some of
'em was tough to look at, but they didn't spoil me sleep none. But some
way a feller's head without no body on it gives me the jimmies. I didn't
like them Jiveros much before, but I got no use at all for 'em now."
"So say we all," seconded Knowlton. "Still, there's no reason why
Maldonado should haunt you. You gave him a good deep burial--what there
was of him. Wonder where the rest of him is."
"Somewheres between the river bank and the white Injun clearin', most
likely. If he'd kep' on burnin' the water downstream the head-hunters
wouldn't never have got him. If he didn't try to do us dirt with the
white Injuns before they caught us he tried it afterwards, I bet."
The red man's random guess was right. His terror diminishing after he
lost sight of the men whom he had sought to despoil, Maldonado had
reflected that their fierceness and their jeering mirth were hardly in
keeping with their apparently diseased condition. Tricky himself, he
speedily suspected that he had been tricked. Whereupon, in a burst of
vicious fury, he had plunged into the jungle to see if he could find the
white Indian settlement and goad its warriors into pursuing the men who
had mocked him. What might have happened to him if he had reached that
clearing and its raging people may be surmised. But he never arrived
there. The head-shrinkers spied him first.
"Dang funny how things have been happenin'," Tim went on. "Take them
white Injuns, now. With the whole jungle to run into, they couldn't hit
no other place but our camp--the last place on earth they'd expect help,
and the only place they could git it. Seems like a miracle."
"Odd, but not miraculous," disagreed Rand. "They dodged the Jiveros
somehow and started running up the path. Then they quit the path--maybe
waded the river a little way--to lose their trail. They undoubtedly know
of this sandy lake on account of its turtle eggs and good hunting. Young
leader thought they'd have a chance to escape in here, so took the
chance; intended to hide the women and children farther in and then
tackle the head-hunters barehanded. They hit our camp because it was
near shore and they were following the lake line. Simple enough."
"Yeah, to hear you tell it. Now tell me somethin' else, Mister Wise
Guy--where's that swaggerin' rascal Hozy, and what's he doin' right
now?"
Rand shook his head.
"Don't ask me. I'm no oracle. But there's a simple way to find out."
"How?"
"Go find José and ask him."
"Huh! Gittin' brighter every day, ain't ye! But say, I dunno, at that."
He glanced sidewise at McKay, who stared expressionless into the fire.
Then he turned to Knowlton.
"Might do that li'l thing, too. Mebbe Hozy's been over here lookin' for
us before now, but couldn't find this new camp--we covered up our trail
dang careful. Anyways, 'twouldn't do no harm to walk over and see how
he's makin' out before we pull our freight north. What d'ye think,
looey?"
The lieutenant met the appeal in Tim's eye, looked at McKay's stiff
neck, smiled slightly.
"I'm game if the rest are. I'd like to know if the old fire-eater's
still alive."
"Same here," Rand added his vote.
A long pause followed. McKay said never a word.
At length Rand arose, stepped to the fire, put on more wood, yawned at
another eye-flash beyond, and suggested: "I'm on first-trick guard duty
to-night. Better hit the hay, Merry."
The blond man, whose night it was to keep vigil from midnight to dawn,
agreed and promptly turned in. McKay, still silent, followed. Tim
grinned slyly at Rand, jerked his head toward the obdurate captain's
back, and retired to his own hammock.
"Wants to go jest as much as we do, but he's too set to own up," was his
thought. "If I ever git rich and go back home I'm goin' to hire one o'
them sculptor guys to carve me a li'l mule out o' the hardest rock there
is, and then I'll name it McKay."
Wherewith he curled up and slept.
Rand returned to his former place and disposed himself comfortably,
facing the fire, cocked rifle now resting across his knees. Several
times during his watch he lifted the gun part way, then let it sink as a
menacing form swiftly dissolved in the darkness. After Knowlton
relieved him he slept tranquilly, undisturbed by any shot.
The day of rest followed, and another night unbroken by gunfire. Then
McKay, ending the second watch at dawn, roused his companions to a day
of action.
In the cool daybreak hour, when the sandy stretch between water and
shore was as devoid of heat as the forested soil behind, the four passed
back and forth through the mist with meat and cans and guns and hammocks
and paddles. They waded into the lake, scooped from the sunken canoes
the sand ballast holding them down, rocked them in the water until
clean, loaded them up, and got aboard. Before the sands beside them were
even warm they were gliding away, leaving behind only a vacant hut where
the tigres now might enter and sniff and snarl in chagrin.
Out to the river they swung. And there, though no word of José had been
spoken for many hours, McKay turned his boat downstream.
Down to the rocks where they had been captured by the men of Pachac they
paddled. There they slid the canoes under cover and worked through the
bush fringe to the path leading toward the clearing where José might or
might not be. But the visit to that clearing ended before it could
begin.
The path was beaten smooth by the passage of many feet. The feet had
passed within forty-eight hours at most. The Americans moved along it a
little way, Rand studying the toe prints along the edges, the spots
where some foot had swung a little wide. Then they stopped, looked at
one another, and turned back toward the canoes.
They knew that a journey southward to the clearing of Pachac's people
would be only a waste of time: that there they would find neither José
nor his adopted brethren. They visioned the scene at that place as truly
as if they now were standing at the end of the trail and gazing across
the opening--an empty, desolate space of stumps, where a few ancient mud
huts gaped vacantly at a charred ruin which had been a tribal house, and
where the plantation at the rear was only an uprooted waste, despoiled
of everything edible. The nomads who had tarried there a few months were
there no more, and unless other wanderers should come and settle on the
abandoned site the ever-encroaching jungle would steadily creep inward
upon it until it was engulfed in a tangle of upshooting green.
"Too late," Rand laconically summarized. "All gone--north."
CHAPTER XVIII
THE TOELESS MAN
At the top of a steep ravine a half squad of men paused, breathing hard,
to mop their streaming faces and renew the oxygen in their laboring
lungs.
Below them, clear and cold, a little stream trickled along the gully out
of which they had just climbed. Behind, a stiff slope dropped from a
ridge topped by tropical timber. Ahead, a short rise pitched upward at a
grade betokening another ridge and ravine beyond. And off at the right,
only a few rods away but concealed from the sight of the quartet by
intervening trees, the Tigre Yacu squirmed its way along a deep
bowlder-choked bed.
The four men knew it was there, but its only use to them now was as a
guiding line. So low was its water level, and so choked its course with
rocks, that it was no longer a feasible roadway into the hinterland.
After days of paddling, poling, wading, shoving and dragging their
canoes through one bad pass after another, the indomitable adventurers
had at last been compelled to abandon the sturdy craft and take to their
legs.
Yet they had not left the dugouts lying carelessly among the bowlders,
nor even secreted them under the cover of low-drooping bush or up a
cleft in the bank. The boats now were high and dry, yet ready for quick
use. They lay at the top of a stiff incline, high above the present
water level, higher even than the old stains marking the topmost reach
of the rainy season floods. It had taken nearly a whole day of strenuous
labor to get them there, for they were stout craft hollowed out from
solid logs, and astoundingly heavy. But there they were, lying on crude
trestles, with bows somewhat lower than the sterns and dipping downward.
In them lay the paddles and a number of tin cases which once had held
oil, later had served as sealed receptacles for food and ammunition, and
now contained nothing at all. Only one of the containers still was
heavy: the one in which remained the "trade" .44 bullets which the party
could not use here but would not throw away.
The positions and equipment of those canoes were significant of three
things: that their owners might be gone for some time, but intended to
come back; that when they did come they might bring something with which
to refill the tins; and that they might wish to depart in a hurry. With
the banks only moderately full of water, it would require merely a quick
shove of the boats down the natural chute to get under way with the
utmost speed. And the season for the setting in of the heavy rains was
not many weeks away. In fact, even now the daily showers seemed to last
a trifle longer than had been the case a fortnight ago.
Now the contents of the vacant tins, together with smoked meat and
hammocks and other wilderness necessities, were dragging at the
shoulders of the four dogged marchers. The men stood leaning far
forward, hands on braced knees, distributing the weight of their packs
and easing their shoulders as they breathed. Hardened though they were
by paddling, and iron-muscled from their strenuous toil among the rocks
of the upper Tigre, they were not yet accustomed to the unceasing strain
and the grueling down-pull of their back burdens. And all knew that
stiffer work must await them.
"Cripes!" wheezed Tim. "I know now what 'tis that drives fellers crazy
up this here river. It's climbin' up these blasted gullies and then
tumblin' down into another one a li'l further on. Up and down, up and
down, and never gittin' nowheres. If I ever git out o' here and back to
N'Yawk I won't be able to travel natural on the sidewalks--I'll have to
climb up the sides o' the buildin's and then fall off the other side.
Pflooey!" He blew a sweat drop from the end of his nose and again
breathed hoarsely.
His humorous arraignment of the country now surrounding them was well
merited. It truly was an up-and-down region, gashed athwart by water
clefts of varying degrees of steepness, and steadily growing higher.
Had he or any of his companions taken the time and trouble to pick out
the tallest tree there-abouts and climb into its lofty crown, he would
have seen, to east and north and west, a maze of jungled hilltops
shouldering upward behind one another; and beyond, on all three sides, a
mountain wall looming mistily against the sky some thirty miles away.
That wall, curving around like the rim of a great lopsided bowl from
which the southeastern quarter had been knocked away, was the mother of
the hills, the mother of the Tigre bowlders: the Cordillera del
Pastassa, with its clawlike eastern spur; the golden mountains of their
dreams.
But, though so near the unknown range toward which they had toiled and
fought, not one of those pack-burdened men had yet seen it. Theirs was
not the free outlook of the creatures of the tree-tops; they were
earth-fettered, swallowed in the labyrinth, able to see only a few rods
at most in any direction, and then seeing only the eternal tangle in
which they seemed doomed to labor for all time. They were here only
because they were stubbornly following the course of the shrunken river,
their compasses, and a dim track pressed into the mold by bare human
feet--the upstream trail which, starting somewhere below the abandoned
white-Indian settlement, still ran on and on into the north and seemed,
as Tim said, to get nowhere. Where they were now they could not tell;
all sense of distance, even of time, was distorted by their
surroundings. They only knew that if they fought onward long enough they
must inevitably reach the mountains and there find--perhaps treasure,
perhaps barrenness.
"If we could only pick up a li'l gold to kid ourselves along, 'twouldn't
be quite so bad," Tim added. "Jest a li'l nugget, or enough color in the
pan to keep us goin'. But there ain't nothin'. Seems like Hozy's yarn
about the crazy guy without no toes must be a dream. Yeah, ol' Hozy
himself seems like a dream now, and his Injuns and all. Nothin' but
jungle and work and bugs and sweat--that's all the real things there
is."
Again he spoke the gaunt truth. In all their tortuous way up the river
they had found no gold worth keeping since that day when Tim had
captured the forty-dollar chunk. Though their gold pans and other mining
tools had all been lost in their capture and escape from the men of
Pachac, they had made shift to wash a little dirt from time to time
since then. They had found color, but in such infinitesimal quantities
as to prove a discouragement instead of a lure. But for three things
they might before now have decided their quest to be hopeless--though
they still would have pushed onward.
Those three things were the nugget itself, still jealously prized by
Tim; the tale of the mad Pardo, which they implicitly believed, though
told by an outlaw who now was no longer a comrade of theirs; and the
fact that the narrator of that tale still was pressing on toward the
cordillera.
How far ahead of them José and his band now were they did not know, but
they knew they were ahead, and that they had gained much distance over
the far slower canoes of the following whites. Traveling at the tireless
pace of the jungle nomad, unburdened by packs, snatching their
sustenance from the forest where civilized beings would have starved,
they had pressed steadily onward while the Americans wrestled their
canoes up through the bowlders. Now their trail was old--washed dim by
the daily rains, trampled under by the fresher tracks of animals. But it
was there, and at long intervals the men following it found unmistakable
signs that the new son of Pachac still led them.
Those signs were few, and so small that only the jungle-trained eye of
Rand spied them: a few threads caught on a thorn, which were recognized
as torn from the Peruvian's raveled shirt-sleeve or ragged breeches; an
exploded .44 cartridge shell glinting dully at one side of the path; the
marks of a machete blade on some severed sapling or vine. The three
former soldiers, though by no means blind to trail signs, would not have
spotted these things as they labored on. But to Rand they spoke as
plainly as if they had been printed placards announcing:
"I, José Martinez, have passed here."
And soon they were to find larger and grimmer signs of the progress of
the deadly-handed outcast.
Having caught their wind, the four straightened up.
"Feel better, Tim, now that the hourly growl is out of your system?"
Knowlton quizzed, in the low tone habitually used.
"Oh, yeah. Le's go, feller idjuts."
They fell into route step and plodded away.
Over the ridge they filed, Rand's eyes ceaselessly scouting ahead and
aside. Down into another gully, up another slope. On again, down again,
up again. And so on, as it seemed always to have been and destined
always to be.
Then, on an upland somewhat longer and more level than usual, the scout
slowed. His head slipped forward, and he sniffed the air like a hunting
animal. But he did not stop. His nose told him that whatever was ahead
was dead.
Just beyond the top of the hill he found it. It lay scattered along on
both sides of the trail, which here led among sizable trees and
comparatively thin undergrowth. It now was nothing but bones. But a few
days ago it had been a body of perhaps twenty men, who had lurked
behind the trees and attacked from ambush. Broken weapons, red-stained
shields, splintered arrows jutting from tree-trunks, remnants of maroon
loin clouts, and trampled ground bore mute testimony to the fierceness
of the fight.
"Tidy little scrap here," said McKay, speaking for the first time in
hours.
"Pachac's gang must be armed again--with clubs, anyway," added Knowlton,
indicating a crushed skull.
"Yeah. And ol' Hozy was right on the job as usual," Tim chimed in.
"Lookit this feller. And there's another one. And a whole handful o'
forty-four shells scattered around."
The two skulls to which he pointed bore the gaping holes of heavy
bullets.
"Good swift action, all right," agreed the lieutenant. "Must have been a
grand old free-for-all for a few minutes. Jiveros, these fellows. Same
equipment as the ones we sent west. Some must have gotten away. Remember
the drums we've been hearing lately?"
The question was hardly necessary. The mutter of those drums off to the
west had caused even sharper vigilance by day and more careful
concealment of the nightly camps. Because of it, no fires had been built
for days. Its menacing note had throbbed in the mind of every man long
after it had died out of the air. Now each glanced searchingly about.
But nothing showed itself.
"Uh-huh. Wal, if more of 'em are out they're prob'ly after Hozy's gang,
not watchin' us," was Tim's comforting suggestion. "And they'll git
plenty o' trouble if they catch up with 'em. Lookit here, there ain't no
hair anywheres around. Ol' Patch-Ike must have most enough scalps in
that belt o' his to make a whole shirt by now. If he cleans up another
bunch o' Jiveros he can start makin' a pair o' pants."
Grim smiles answered him. But the same thought was in each man's
mind--Pachac's band must be smaller now than before this ambush. Was
José leading the tribe to victory over all raiders, or to ultimate
destruction? Or was he still alive and leading? This might have been his
last fight.
Rand hitched his pack and resumed his vigilant advance. The short column
filed onward past the other relics of jungle warfare, dipped down into
another valley, and left the battlefield behind. There was no further
talk.
For some time they kept on before halting again. Then their pause was
caused, not by men nor beasts, but by weather. The light faded, a murmur
of approaching rain came to them, big drops spattered, and a spanking
downpour set in--the daily shower. Picking a spreading tree, they
squatted against the trunk, glad enough to slip their packs and rest.
Suddenly, some distance ahead, a faint yell broke through the slash of
falling water. It came but once.
At its own good time the rain swept onward and the light brightened. The
four arose and advanced, keenly alert. No sound but the steady drip of
moisture came to their ears, and for a time no new sight met their eyes.
Then Rand stopped short--looked--listened--and advanced on something at
a bend in the trail.
There, face down, lay a man. He was naked, black-haired, but apparently
a white. His hands were dug into the dirt as if he had tried to raise
himself after falling. His back was a welter of spear wounds.
Some one had run him down and stabbed him repeatedly in savage ferocity;
stabbed him again and again after the death-thrust. Then the killer had
vanished into the rain-swept jungle, carrying with him the spear.
Nowhere around the body now was sign of any man but the newcomers.
Rand stooped, looking closer. On the skin above and below the
death-wounds were scars, not old, left by a whip.
Turning him over, the four looked down into a gaunt face overgrown by
black beard: a face of Spanish cast, coupled with certain Indian
features; the face of a mestizo, Peruvian or Ecuadorean. Their eyes ran
down his frame. Then every one started.
Back into their minds flashed the words of José, describing the crazed
Rafael Pardo who had reeled into Iquitos with his bag of gold:
"His skin was seamed with scars like those of a whip. His toes were
gone--every one cutoff!"
This murdered man on the ground, as they had just seen, also bore whip
scars. And his feet were mutilated. Not one toe remained.
CHAPTER XIX
THE GOLDEN MOUNTAINS
Staring down at that maltreated man, the four muttered in growling
undertones. When they lifted their gaze and peered again into the misty
depths ahead their faces were hard set.
"We'll halt here," said McKay. "Unsling packs."
The burdens dropped. Tim, his blue eyes glittering, slipped the
safety-catch off his breech bolt and lunged ahead, seeking the man who
had speared the scarred victim.
"Dave! Stop him!" added McKay, without raising his voice.
Rand, also ready for action, loped away after the mad Irishman. Even
when cool, there was nothing subtle or stealthy about Tim; and when
enraged he charged like an infuriated bull, seeing red and oblivious of
the disturbance he made. Now he was slapping down his feet and knocking
aside drooping bush noisily enough to warn his quarry long before he
could overtake it. Hearing the pursuit, the man--or men--ahead would
undoubtedly slip into cover and spear him in the back after he passed.
But Rand did not attempt to fulfill the command literally and stop him
short. He only sprinted up to him and hoarsely whispered: "Less noise!
They'll dodge you!"
The fear of alarming and losing his prey slowed Tim down at once,
whereas an appeal to "go easy" or to "watch yourself" would have
resulted only in a contemptuous snort and an increase of speed. Before
long he stopped of his own accord, breathing hard and glaring around.
"We must have passed him," he panted. "He ain't had time to git this
far. Skulkin' in the bush back of us, most likely."
His companion thought otherwise, but he did not say so. The Indian
probably had turned back immediately after killing his man and loped
away on his back trail, moving without haste but eating up space at
every stride. By this time he undoubtedly was well ahead, unconscious of
the fact that white men were behind him. Further pursuit now would mean
a long chase and probable ambush. Moreover, the rain had washed out any
sign of fresh footmarks. Common sense demanded a return to their
companions.
"Probably," Rand feigned to agree. "No sign up ahead, anyway. Let's look
along back."
They looked, and found nothing. Returning to the body, they found
Knowlton arranging a rough cairn of down-blown branches, while McKay
watched in all directions.
"Best we can do," explained the blond man. "He's part white, anyway,
and I'm going to give him what cover there is. Some thorn branches on
top will keep off the animals."
"What do you make of it, Rod?" asked Rand. "Jiveros didn't do this.
They'd have taken his head."
"Can't make it out," admitted the captain. "Looks to me like pure
savagery. There may be some tribe in here that nobody's heard about.
Certainly there's something around here that maims men. This fellow had
no gold like that Pardo chap. Why he should be killed I can't figure."
"Personal enmity, perhaps," hazarded Knowlton. "Whoever downed him gave
him enough stabbing to kill him a dozen times. A prisoner, possibly, who
got gay with an Indian woman and then tried to escape."
"Prisoner of whom?"
"Don't ask me. I'm only guessing."
"Mebbe if we keep on pluggin' we'll learn a lot," Tim morosely
suggested. "And here's hopin' I git the guy that done this! I'm sore, I
am. Killin's bad enough, but this cuttin' off toes and stabbin' in the
back--grrrumph!"
For a moment all stood squinting again along the empty track which led
into the north. The same thought came to all at once.
"José's up ahead somewhere--or his gang is, or ought to be," Knowlton
voiced it.
"Hozy wouldn't have no hand in nothin' like this," Tim remonstrated.
"Mebbe his gang would; but how would this guy git past 'em all? Whoever
got him was chasin' him."
"And these feet have been toeless a long time," Rand added.
"Looks as if the Pachac crowd were side-tracked," said McKay. "Or else
this chap came in from some other trail. Come. Let's move."
Tim and Knowlton bore the dead man to the cairn and covered him. Then
they shouldered their packs. The file got under way.
Once more in the lead, Rand studied the damp trail more closely even
than usual. It gave no sign for a time, the rain having blurred all
marks except the fresh boot-heel tracks left by Tim's feet and his own.
Not until they had labored up and down and onward for some distance did
he find what he watched for. Then, reaching a spot where thick
interlacing of branches overhead had formed a gigantic umbrella and
thrown the downpour aside, he slowed, squinted, and nodded.
New footmarks receded ahead--the tracks of bare feet bound northward.
And they had been made by more than one man.
He said nothing until an extra steep climb made all pause at the crest
of another bank to recover their breath. When his lungs again were
pumping normally he stated his deduction.
"Small gang of killers trailed that fellow purposely to get him. When
they ran him down they finished him quick and started straight back.
Looks as if they were working under orders and hurried back to report
success. Otherwise they'd have hung around until the rain let up."
"Mebbe they did."
"No. They went at once, regardless. Rain has been washing their trail.
Good thing they did, too."
"Why?"
"Otherwise we'd be minus one crazy Irishman."
"Huh? Say, feller, d'ye think I can't handle meself----"
"With a bunch of spears in your back?"
Tim blinked.
"Oh. Yeah. I git ye. Lemme charge past and then heave their harpoons?
Uh-huh. Wal, that's the only way they could git away with it, I'll tell
the world."
Nevertheless the belligerent ex-sergeant twitched his shoulders and
sneaked a look at the forest behind him. He had been shot once in the
back--in France, by a German infantryman who had pretended surrender and
then used a short-barreled pistol--and now the old wound seemed to burn.
Maybe he surmised why Rand had followed him in his recent reckless run
and inveigled him back. At any rate, his next words seemingly had little
connection with his last utterance.
"Ye're a good skate, Davey, ol' sock."
Davey, the good skate, smiled and then plodded away.
As before, he kept watch of the retreating footprints before him, though
not so carefully now, since he had learned that what he suspected was
true. They were visible only at intervals, in spots where the ground was
soft, wet, and protected from the bygone rain. At length the rainfall
ceased to have any influence on the marks, and the scout knew that
hereabouts the killers had emerged from the westward-speeding shower.
The tracks faded out, reappeared farther on, vanished, showed again at
another place; always spaced the same, showing a steady pace, and always
following the mysterious trail toward the mountains.
He noticed, too, as automatically as he breathed, the creeping slant of
the shadows cast by the westering sun. For many weeks--ever since
descending from the Andes into the low-lands, in fact--this had been
their only means of gauging the passage of the hours; for every watch in
the party had stopped after a few days in the heavy moisture charging
the air east of the colossal cordilleras, and thus they had been reduced
to the most primitive means of time measurement. Now he knew that in
little more than an hour the grueling advance must end for that day, if
a safe and snug camp for the night was to be made.
The hour dragged past, filled with nothing but Tim's summary of their
previous marching--"jungle and work and bugs and sweat." The feet of the
men behind, and his own as well, were slipping now on roots and in wet
spots which, earlier in the day, they would have cleared without effort;
the legs now had lost resiliency, and the hungry, overworn bodies were
becoming like engines whose fuel was burning out. But the present spot
was unsuitable for camping--an upland, devoid of live water. So he
tramped on, seeking a night haven.
The ground still rose. It held no more of those heartbreaking gullies,
however, and progress was not too difficult, even for nearly exhausted
men. Doggedly they kept putting one foot before the other until half an
hour more had passed. Then the light ahead grew brighter. The trees
seemed to thin out.
Studying the forest around him, the scout presently spied something and
paused. The column stood hunched over, the three behind looking the
questions they had not the breath to ask.
"Dry camp," puffed Rand. "Getting late. Got to stop. Water trees here.
We can make out."
He jerked his head aside. Scanning the timber, the others recognized a
tree which they knew but had never yet had to rely on--the huadhuas, or
water tree, a bamboo from whose joints could be obtained quarts of clear
water. They nodded, dropped packs, staggered, adjusted their balances
to the sudden loss of weight, and looked about for a good place to make
camp away from the trail.
"Over there," directed McKay, picking a place well bushed but not too
thick, and near a couple of widely spaced huadhuas. Heaving up their
packs on one shoulder, they threaded their way into the covert, cast
about for snakes, found none, and sank down for a brief rest.
Presently Rand arose and, with no explanation, returned to the trail.
Along it he journeyed toward that thinning of the trees. He was gone for
some little time. When he returned his eyes glowed.
"Didn't mean to slack on camp work," he said, glancing around at the
results of the labors of his mates. "Been scouting. Come on. Want to
show you something."
They followed him. Along the path they went, feeling almost fresh again
without their back burdens. The forest grew thinner and thinner. All at
once they stopped, subdued exclamations breaking from them.
They stood at the brink of a sharp declivity where, years ago, a
land-slip had occurred. Under them yawned a sizable gulf, partly filled
with water dammed by the fallen earth. But, after one glance, they gave
no attention to it. Their gaze darted off to the northwest.
For the first time in many a weary day they saw mountains. For the
first time they looked on the end of their long trail.
There in the north, blue-black at the base and gleaming golden at the
summits, rose the tumbled upheavals of a bygone age: the looping range
of the Pastassa, sprawling outrider of the tremendous column of the
Andes. The misty atmosphere of the lower lands, which usually blurred
the vista from this point, was swept clean for once by a stiff north
wind now hurling itself at the faces of the four invaders; and in the
fast-lifting light of the dropping sun the glowing peaks seemed looming
over them, aglitter with unminted treasure--a promise, a lure, which
might prove true or false.
Somewhere beyond that range, draining its northern slopes, the Curaray
flowed down its golden bed to the Napo. Somewhere beyond its western
segment stretched the river valley of the Pastassa, home-land of the
head-shrinkers whose roving outposts twice had come into the trail of
the four. Somewhere ahead in that great pocket of the mountains the
trail must end at--what? The grim place where men went mad? The final
port of all the missing men of the Tigre Yacu?
Whatever might wait in the few remaining traverses between here and the
cordillera, it now was masked by the rolling jungle and the long shadows
thrown from the western wall. Below the sunlit summits stretched a
twilight land wherein showed no sign of man; an expanse which, for all
the eye could discern, might have lain untrodden by human foot since
first it rose out of the waters of the vast inland sea. Only the vague
path still leading onward, only the bodies of the mutilated man and of
the head-hunters who had come down it, proved that men moved somewhere
under that baffling jungle cover girt by the mountain rim.
McKay, first to move, drew out his compass. The quivering needle
verified the sun slant: they were gazing north-northwest. Returning it
to his pocket, he remarked in a matter-of-fact tone: "Better move. It'll
be getting dark soon."
Rand, who had looked out at the same scene once before, faced about
promptly. Knowlton, his blue eyes shining with the light of the dreamer
who sees his vision at last coming true, stood a moment longer before
reluctantly turning away. Tim pivoted on one heel, yawned, and agreed:
"Yeah. I'm hungry."
Through the thickening shadows they filed back to their covert. There
Knowlton spoke.
"Well, by thunder, we've something to look forward to now. We're almost
there. The golden mountains!"
"Mebbe," said Tim.
"Maybe what?"
"Golden. If gold's there, it keeps settin' tight and don't go down the
river. Say, where's that river, anyways? We lost it."
"Over east somewhere," said Rand. "It's no good to us any more. The
trail is the thing to follow."
"If there's no gold, Tim," challenged Knowlton, "where did Pardo get
his? He came out of here--scarred and crippled like the fellow we met
to-day."
"Uh-huh. Wal, here's hopin'. We've had a run for our money--now I want
to see the money for the run."
"If it isn't there we'll keep on going until we find some," smiled
McKay. "It's only two or three hundred miles farther to the Llanganati.
There's gold there--if you can find it."
"Yeah? Only two-three hundred miles, huh? Totin' a pack all the way, o'
course?"
"Of course. But when you get there all you have to do is to find the
Incas' lake and get out the gold."
"Uh-huh. And all I got to do to git from here to there to-morrer mornin'
is to tune up me airyplane and let 'er rip. Talk to me about it after
breakfast, cap. I'm tired now."
"What's this yarn about the Incas' lake, Rod?" asked Rand. "Same old
stuff you hear in Peru?"
"Same stuff. Incas threw billions of gold into an artificial lake on the
side of the Llanganati during the Conquest. Good many men have lost
their lives trying to find it. Still, it seems to ring truer than most
of those Inca lake stories.
"They tell about one fellow named Valverde--Spaniard, of course--who was
poor as dirt and went native. Awhile after he took his Indian wife he
became enormously rich. Girl's father showed him how to get at the Inca
gold and helped him raise a lot of it. He went back to Spain, and when
he died he told the king of Spain how to get at the rest of the
treasure. But it's still there."
Tim's eyes began to glisten. This was a new tale: a tale of lost
treasure hundreds of miles away--far more alluring than the possibility
of equal treasure within a few leagues. Inca gold! The dream of every
Andes adventurer for more than three centuries!
"And nobody's got it?" he demanded.
"No. Expeditions don't come back. Even one led by a priest--Padre
Longo--didn't come back. After that, nobody else had the nerve to try
for it."
"Gee! Say, if we don't find nothin' here le's keep on goin'! We can git
there some time--if our cartridges hold out--and it'll take somethin'
gosh-awful to lick this gang after we land there. What d'ye say,
fellers?"
The others laughed. Pessimistic a few minutes ago, croaking over the
lack of gold in the Tigre--and now all afire to dare hundreds of miles
of cordillera in chasing a new rainbow: that was Tim Ryan all over.
"We'll see what's here first," chuckled McKay. "Let's eat."
Silence fell on the darkening camp, broken only by masticatory noises
and gulping of water previously drained from the huadhuas. Then across
the jungle roof swept the sunset noise of birds and animals, announcing
night. Gloom enveloped them. They ate on, wordless.
All at once they stopped chewing and leaned forward. On the wings of the
wind still pouring out of the north came a new sound. It was not the
roar of a tigre, the death scream of stricken animal or man, the snarl
of jungle battle, the report of a gun. Any of these would have held them
alert for a time; but the thing they did hear made them squat motionless
as frozen men until it ceased. Even after it died they held that same
rigid pose, staring dumbly into the dark.
Deep, slow, doleful as a requiem for the lost men who had never returned
from their quest into this fastness--a bell had tolled.
CHAPTER XX
DEAD MAN'S LAND
Noonday sun stabbed down through the branches stretching over the curved
crest of a long, rambling ridge. In scattered splotches it lit up
sections of a faintly marked path leading along the upland. Filtering
through tall ferns beside the path, it sprayed over bearded men in torn,
jungle-stained clothing who sat on their packs and smoked.
Another fireless meal had just been finished, and the usual cigarettes
were aglow. But the four were not lounging in the careless attitudes
customary to men relaxing in the languor induced by food and tobacco.
Each leaned a little forward, his feet under him, ready for a sudden
upward jump. Each faced inward toward his companions, but his eyes kept
swinging back and forth in vigilant watch of the forest beyond the man
opposite. Between his knees, butt on the ground and left hand curled
around the barrel, each held an upright rifle. And every man's pistol
hung ready for a swift draw.
"If the cusses would only show themselves!" complained Tim. "If we could
only git a look at 'em oncet! They been trailin' along with us the last
two days, and we dang well know it. But never a hair will they show.
Me, I'm ready for a scrap any ol' time, and the sooner the quicker. But
this thing of expectin' a spear or a poison arrer in me ribs any minute
and never seein' me man--I don't like it."
The tense attitudes of the others showed that they felt exactly the same
way. For two days, as Tim said, they had been under that strain--the
knowledge that they were escorted by flitting Things which they could
always feel, could sometimes hear, but could never see: an unceasing
harassment which wore on their nerves more than half a dozen deadly
fights. For two nights, standing guard in two-hour shifts, they had felt
the invisible Something close by, ready to strike yet never striking.
Even now they were positive that the stealthy movements which they heard
from time to time were not those of animals; that the slight waving of a
bush here and there was not caused by a breeze.
"Next time I see those ferns over there move, I'm going to shoot into
them," breathed Knowlton, eyes fixed on something beyond Rand.
"Hold in, Merry!" warned McKay. "That's a rookie trick."
"I don't give a whoop! They're there, and if they won't start it I'm
willing to."
"Take a brace, man! You'll hit nothing. You'll start more than you can
finish. Don't be an old woman!"
"I've got a theory about this thing," stated Rand, as calmly as if he
did not feel Death lurking at his shoulder blades. "These fellows,
whoever they are, are willing to keep us coming along. They have a use
for us--up ahead somewhere; up where that bell rings. If you really want
to start something, start back along the trail instead of ahead. I'll
bet you wouldn't get ten feet away."
McKay nodded.
"Remember how that toeless chap's back looked," he added.
At the memory of that red welter the lieutenant twitched his shoulders.
"While ye're springin' theories, I got one o' me own," Tim hinted
darkly.
"Well?"
"Wal, I ain't much of a hand to believe in things that ain't. Jest the
same, there's some missin' men up here. They'll keep on bein'
missin'--they're dead! And they're the guys that's round us now!"
"Ghosts? Nonsense!"
"Mebbe. But why can't we see 'em? Why don't they cough or spit or
breathe loud like live men? Who pulls that there funeral bell at night?
How come a bell up here, anyways? I tell ye, it ain't a real bell! These
things ain't live men! And it's that bell, them dead men snoopin' round,
that drives live men crazy up here! If I was alone here long I'd be
ravin', meself."
There was no levity in his voice. And, though the others tried to laugh,
their mirth was forced. Despite himself, every man had fallen under the
uncanny spell of the deep jungle during the weeks on the weird Tigre
Yacu. And it is a fact, as experienced jungle rovers know, that in the
vast tropic wilderness are things which none can explain. Sounds like
the clang of an iron bar, where there is no bar or iron; the ringing of
a bell where no bell could possibly be; a penetrating, nerve-destroying
hiss like that of a huge steam pipe, hundreds of miles from steam; these
and other sounds, which the Indians ascribe to demons, coupled with the
sudden and absolute disappearance of men who leave no trace of their
fate--these are a few of the unearthly occurrences in the great green
abyss below the Andes which confound reason and sense. And these four
were overworn by hardship.
But none except straightforward Tim would admit, even to himself, that
the weird espionage of those invisible Things was undermining his scorn
of the supernatural.
"If there were such a thing as a Dead Man's Land, and if this were it,"
the lieutenant doggedly combated, "you'd never catch Pachac and his
people going up here. They're still ahead."
"Yeah? How d'ye know they are? We ain't seen a sign of 'em lately. Ask
ol' Eagle-Eye Rand. There ain't nothin' to show they ever got this
far."
Rand shook his head half an inch. Tim spoke truth.
"Then where did they go, if not up here?" Knowlton persisted. "There's
been no sign that they turned off."
"Where'd the other guys go that come up here? How do we know what got
'em?"
There was a silence. Now and then a fern nodded, a slight creeping sound
floated to them, but no life showed.
"Theories are no good," bluntly declared McKay. "But I've got one, too.
That bell belongs to some old Spanish mission; those old Jesuits would
go anywhere--the more God-forsaken the place, the better. The
descendants of their converts are still here. Maybe they're virulent
fanatics and practice a few fancy torments on fellows who don't come up
to their requirements. Remember what was said about the wheel awaiting
us."
Another silence. Then Knowlton said: "Sounds more reasonable than Tim's
nightmare. That might explain the whip scars and the toe-cutting, too.
If that's it, I'm out of luck. My folks were Baptists."
"Mine were Episcopalians," from Rand.
"Presbyterians," from McKay.
"Me, I'm s'posed to be Catholic, but I'm a danged poor one," finished
Tim. "'Twouldn't do me no good, anyways, if I got caught by a bunch
that tried to ram religion into me with a hot poker. I'd git mad and
tell 'em I was a Turk or somethin'. But what's the odds? There ain't
religion enough in this hard-boiled crowd to hurt none of us, or help us
either. Wait a minute, though. Mebbe I can git a rise out o' these
guys."
He rose, facing a spot where he had detected several unexplainable dips
of a bush. Slowly he made the sign of the cross.
After a minute he made it again. No sound or movement answered him.
"Nope. Yer dope's no good, cap. The cross don't mean nothin' here. Now
le's see if a li'l Irish nerve will git us anything."
With steady tramp he advanced at the spot he had watched. Ever so
slightly, the bush dipped again. A faint rustle, hardly audible, came
from beyond it. Eyes narrowed, jaw out, the ex-sergeant plowed into it
and stopped. After peering around he backed out again. His broad face
was not so florid as before.
"There ain't no sign here! No footmarks--no busted leaves--nothin'! By
cripes, it's like I tell ye--these guys ain't human!"
The others, who also had risen and stood ready for action, glanced
around and at one another. Knowlton shrugged.
"You fellows have all sprung your theories. Now here's mine," he
announced. "We'll get to the bottom of things if we keep going. And
we'll get nowhere stopping here. Let's go."
With this pronouncement everyone agreed.
One by one they slung their packs--one by one, so that three always
could maintain their readiness for anything. The donning of their
burdens now was not so difficult as it had been a few days ago, for the
men were hardened to them and the packs were lighter: too light, in
fact, so far as their food content was concerned. But Tim, though
anxious to be moving away from the masking ferns, could not forbear his
customary half-serious growl.
"Dead guys don't have to git humpbacked luggin' these blasted packs,
anyways. If these fellers are goin' to knock me in the head I hope it'll
come quick, so's I can git a li'l rest out of it. I'd hate to git killed
jest when I got to a place where I could drop this thing for good."
With a final heave of the shoulders to swing the weight into the right
place, he fell into position in file and took up the step. The column
plodded away, heads moving from side to side in constant watch. Around a
huge tree it wound, and into the northward trail it vanished.
As it disappeared, a louder rustle sounded among the ferns and bushes,
which swayed more abruptly than before. Then they stood motionless
again, and the sound died. The encompassing Things also had moved on.
Foot by foot, stride by stride, the four forged onward along the
curving ridge top. Inch by inch the sun shadows crept eastward. Hour by
hour the hot afternoon grew old. And as steadily as the little file
swung ahead, as smoothly as the sun rolled in its course, the escort of
silent Dead Men kept pace on either flank of the advancing force.
The ridge seemed to have no end. It rose in long grades, sloped away
again, lifted and ran level, dipped at another easy slant, but still
remained a ridge. At times, as the forest growth thinned, the marchers
glimpsed the sky on either side. But they saw nothing of what lay out
beyond those occasional side openings, nothing of what waited ahead at
the end of the upland--and nothing of the Things trooping along in the
cover at the sides of the path.
As the hours passed, no halt was made. None was needed on this ungullied
upland, where no sharp declivities had to be scaled and the lungs
functioned as rhythmically as the feet swung. Mile after mile crept away
behind, until Tim's unspoken thought was reflected in the minds of his
comrades:
"We're really travelin' now! We'd ought to git somewheres by night!"
And get somewhere they did. At length, with an abruptness that halted
them short, they emerged into open air. They dug in their heels and gave
back, smitten with sudden qualms at the pit of the stomach. Almost
under their feet yawned a gulf.
A sheer drop of hundreds of feet--a wooded country below--a tremendous
mountain wall fronting them a half mile away; these were the things
their startled minds registered in the first flashing instant of
instinctive recoil. So long had their vision been confined by the dense
tropic growth that the sudden burst into emptiness shocked their brains
and sickened their bodies. Dizzily they wavered backward.
For many seconds they hung there in a close-drawn knot, while eyes and
nerves and equilibrium readjusted themselves. At length they cautiously
edged forward. A little back from the brink they peered downward,
studying the green carpet far below.
It seemed a solid mass of jungle, unbroken by any clearing, unlined by
river or road: a somber abyss wherein might live weird monsters spawned
in the hideous Mesozoic age, but where the foot of man never had
trodden. It curved away at both ends, its continuation cut off from the
eye by jutting outcrops of the wall on which they stood. A yawning
pit--nothing more.
Out of it, on the farther side, towered the mountain--a huge bulk,
densely overgrown in its lower reaches, clad more thinly up above,
nearly bald at the top. Along its side showed no indication of life
except an occasional pair of parrots winging their way from point to
point. Grim, forbidding, it brooded over its chasm as if guarding its
fastness from invasion.
Up and down the four studied it, and back and forth along the gulf they
swung their gaze. At the first appalled glance the drop had seemed to be
at least a thousand feet, but now that they had steadied themselves they
estimated it at not more than five hundred. The mountain shooting up
beyond might be three thousand feet high; possibly several hundred more.
How long the curving valley might be they could not tell. But there
seemed to be no reason for exploring it, nor any way----
Tim drew in his breath sharply. The others glanced at him and found him
looking over one shoulder, ashen-faced.
"Oh cripes, I knowed it!" he breathed. "Here they are, and they're dead
as hell!"
They whirled. At last they saw the Things.
A bare spear's-throw away, blocking the trail, stood men. But such men!
Their ribs projected. Their arms seemed bones. Their eyes gleamed
hollowly under matted black hair. And their skins were green.
Green as the jungle around them, they were. Had they moved and slipped
into the bush, they would have vanished like specters. But they did not
move. At least a dozen strong, they stood there in a solid body, holding
javelins poised at their shoulders. The points of those spears were
long, saw-edged, and dark with the stain of poison. One cast, one
scratch from those venomed edges, and the whites would be doomed.
Fronted by death, backed by death, the four stood like statues. Then one
of the ghastly creatures slowly lifted its left arm. Its green
forefinger pointed beyond the trapped men. With dread significance, that
finger turned down. In the soulless eyes of the creature was a command.
"Oh Gawd!" groaned Tim. "We got to jump off!"
CHAPTER XXI
INTO THE ABYSS
Motionless, wordless, breathless, the other three stood facing the
gruesome things blocking the only avenue of retreat from the brink.
The green arm pointing to death hung rigid, the cavernous eyes remained
fixed in a snaky stare. The poisoned points neither lifted nor lowered,
poising as if truly held in dead hands. Only the regular rise and fall
of the breathing lungs under the gaunt ribs proved that the Things were
living men.
Rand, without moving his lips, spoke nasally from a corner of his mouth.
"Drop flat and shoot from the ground. Spears may go over us. Give the
word, Rod."
But McKay did not speak that word. Instead, he took his eyes from the
green menace and glanced behind. Then he coolly turned his back, stepped
to the extreme edge, and moved along it, looking down.
"Not necessary," he said, after a moment. "Trail goes down here. We'll
follow it."
"Trail?" Knowlton echoed in amazement. "Where?"
"Rock stairs drop to a shelf. Pretty risky, but possible. Not much
worse than some places we struck in the Andes. Come and look."
Gingerly the blond man backed. Tim and Rand maintained their wary watch
of the Things.
McKay pointed a little to the left of a segment of the ragged edge.
There, as he had said, a flight of crude steps jutted from the sheer
face of the precipice--perhaps a dozen of them, widening as they
descended to a narrow shelf leading away to the westward. The top stair
was hardly two feet wide, the shelf not more than four: a precarious
passage flanked on one side by the upstanding wall and on the other by
nothing at all.
"Ugh!" muttered the lieutenant. "Dangerous even for an Indian.
Impossible for us. The slightest bump of a pack against that rough rock
throws you out and down. And our boots will slip on those slanting
stones. Can't be done."
"Got to do it, or end our trail here."
It was stark truth. This was the trail. To quit it here meant, at best,
only a long, sour retreat to the canoes and back down the Tigre. At
worst, it meant death from the poisoned spears still closing their path.
And there was little chance that all those spears would miss their
marks.
"Once we're on that shelf, we can travel," Knowlton conceded. "But
getting there is the job."
"Take off pack. Take off boots. Go down backward, easing the pack after
you with your hands, step by step. If the pack slips let it go
overboard. I'll try it out first."
Stepping back a little from the edge, he nodded to the green men. The
spearheads wavered slightly, sinking a little lower. McKay unslung his
pack, sat down, and began unlacing his boots.
"Tim--Dave--get ready," he urged. "Never mind those fellows. They won't
do anything just now."
His calm voice expressed more confidence than he felt. Yet he was
reasonably sure that no attack would be made unless precipitated by his
own party. These green men, he reflected, could have attacked at any
time during the past two days, and with greater safety to themselves.
Their object, as Rand had said, seemed to be to herd the invaders
onward, not to kill unless they attempted retreat. What fate waited
beyond those stairs he could not even surmise. But they could hardly be
trapped in a more hopeless position than the present one; and they still
retained their weapons.
"Ooch! Sufferin' goats!" blurted Tim, when he saw what must be done. "Go
down that? I'll fight this gang barehanded first!"
"Then you'll fight alone," retorted the captain, tugging at the first
boot. "The rest of us are going down."
Rand said nothing. He studied the hazardous path, clamped his jaws
tighter, and began preparations for descent. Tim looked at him, at the
others, at the green men; opened and shut his mouth; mumbled dolefully,
and took off his pack.
As McKay arose, with boots slung around his neck and rifle looped across
his shoulders, a sound from the southwest throbbed across the silence.
It was the far-off boom of drums.
"Huh! They're at it again," commented Tim. "Same ol' message stuff we
been hearin'----Hullo! What ails these dead guys?"
At the rumble of the drums the green men had started. Now they had
turned their heads and were looking back into the jungle. They stirred,
lifted their spears higher in an involuntary gesture of defense, drew a
little closer together as if threatened with attack. For the moment they
seemed to have forgotten the whites.
If the adventurers had snatched the opportunity quickly enough they
might have poured a devastating fire into those momentarily unready
foes; might even, by fast work, have wiped them out completely. But none
moved. All watched the weird creatures in wonder. Soon some of the green
faces turned back. They now bore a trace of human emotion: fear.
"Guess those drums don't belong to these greenies," said Knowlton.
"They're Jivero drums, undoubtedly, and they seem to spell trouble for
our genial hosts. We're not going into Jivero country down below, then.
That's something."
"We're goin' into Dead Man's country, I'm thinkin'," croaked Tim. "This
here hole is where all the rest of 'em are waitin' for us. I wonder if
we'll look like these guys in a li'l while."
"They're a good Irish color, Tim," the captain grimly joked. "Maybe old
Saint Pat is waiting for you down below. Here goes to find out."
"Saint Pete, ye mean. Waitin' to hand me a li'l harp the minute I fall
offen them crazy rock steps. But I don't want no harp yet----Hang tight,
cap, and go slow, for the love o' Mike!"
McKay was dragging his pack to the edge. Cautiously but coolly he laid
it at the top step, turned backward, let himself down on hands and
knees, straightened a leg and felt for the second stair. Finding it, he
slid over and worked down until he had his knees firmly braced below.
Then, very carefully, he drew the pack toward him and tested its balance
on the rock above.
"Too heavy and too wide," he decided. "Haul it back, Dave."
Rand dragged it back, and the captain rose. Once more on the top, he
began unstrapping his roll.
"You were right, Merry--we can't handle these things," he granted.
"Every man take what he can carry in his clothes. Get all the cartridges
and matches, and whatever else you can tote without making yourself
clumsy. Leave the rest."
"How about grub?" queried Tim.
"One meat strip apiece. Down below we'll have to shoot our grub or
starve. Don't overload, or you'll be twanging that harp in a few
minutes."
Faced by that alternative, the four picked from the opened packs what
they could safely stow in pockets, shirts, and empty boots, plus their
hammocks, the two short axes, and the light table gun, which could be
stuffed under belts or taken down by hand. The remaining duffle was
ruefully cast into the edge of the bush. The green men watched
wolfishly, but made no move toward the abandoned equipment.
Again McKay essayed the perilous slant, going backward as before,
keeping his eyes on the rock stairs as he passed downward, feeling his
way with sockless feet. Once his rifle butt hit a projection on the
wall, jolting him suddenly. His mouth twisted, and for a second his eyes
swerved outward. But he gripped the stair above, raised himself a bit,
swung his hips somewhat away from the wall, lowered himself again inch
by inch--and the gun scraped past. A few more careful moves, and he
stood on the shelf.
"One down," he announced, his voice a little husky. "Who comes next?"
"I," volunteered Rand. And, grimly steady, he made the descent without
mishap.
"Lemme go now," begged Tim. "Me feet are gittin' colder all the time. If
I wait any longer me legs will be stiff to me hips."
Knowlton, who stood ready to go, drew back and made room for the red
man--who now was not red, but distinctly pale--to pass. Tim got on all
fours, fumbled to a footing on the first step, and drew a long breath.
"Here goes nothin'!" he quavered, trying to grin. "And may God have
mercy on me soul!" His last utterance came from the bottom of his heart.
"Slowly and easy does it, old top," the lieutenant warned. "Take all the
time in the world. Don't look down. Just ease yourself down
slow--slow--that's the way! Get a good foothold every time.
Slow--easy--it widens out at every step, you know."
Set-jawed, glassy-eyed, Tim inched down. For him the passage really was
harder than for any of the others: he was too broad and stocky. His left
side hung out over the abyss, and his muscular but short legs lacked the
reach of McKay's, or even of Rand's. The pair below watched every
movement, coached him at every downward reach, warned him of every
projection. And at last, shaky, gasping like a fish out of water,
dripping with cold sweat, he found himself beside them.
"Wal, I--huh--come through without no--huh--harp in me hand," he panted,
grasping at the wall. "But I wouldn't do it again for a--huh--million
dollars. I'm sick to me stummick!"
"Stand still a minute," counseled Rand. "Watch Merry come down."
Knowlton already was backing over the edge. He threw a final glance at
the green men, who showed no sign of intending to follow.
"So long, you fragrant hunks of green cheese!" he mocked.
The menacing figures spoke no word. Their lusterless eyes showed no
glint of anger at his taunting grin. Only their spearheads, now almost
resting on the ground, lifted a little and pointed at his face.
Knowlton dropped his eyes to the rocks and concentrated his attention on
the deadly serious work of getting down. And now the hand of Death,
hovering close over the head of each man traversing that treacherous
spot, showed itself.
Perhaps it was because he was last in line and anxious to join his
waiting comrades and move on; perhaps it was a touch of recklessness; or
perhaps the sloping stones were slightly slippery from the passage of
three perspiring men. At any rate, the lieutenant descended just a
trifle too fast. Reaching for the fourth step, he slipped.
His unbooted feet caught the stair and clung. But the butt of the rifle
on his back hit solidly against the same ugly projection which had
caught McKay's. The barrel slapped sidewise and struck the blond head a
vicious blow.
He lurched out toward the chasm, dazedly clutching at the step above.
Then, balanced on the utter edge of the abyss, he lay limp.
Another movement, a slip of the gun, a shifting of something in pockets
or belt, would turn him over and slide him into the green maw gaping
below.
With a hoarse croak Tim jumped upward. Tim, who had confessed cold feet;
Tim, still actually ill from dread; Tim, who would not touch those
stairs again for a fortune, sprang up them like a mountain goat. His
body slithered against the face of the precipice. His big hands
clutched, one at the edge of a step, the other at his lieutenant's slack
shirt. In one smooth, steady haul he slid the stunned man in toward the
cliff.
And while the two below stood frozen, unable to help, he worked his own
way backward and slipped the reviving man down stair after stair. He did
not look to see where he stepped. He planted his feet with unerring
surety, grasped tiny projections without seeing them, balanced himself
as lightly as a fly. In hoarse tones he muttered over and over:
"Jest lay still, looey. Lay limp and we'll make it. We're most down and
goin' strong. Attaboy! Lay still, ol' feller, la-a-ay still!"
And he reached the shelf, laid his man out straight beside the wall, and
grinned gray-faced at him. Then he wavered, clutched at the crag beside
him, and sank down. And for the next few minutes he was absolutely and
utterly sick.
"By God!" breathed McKay. "I've seen men awarded the D. S. C. for deeds
not half as brave as that!"
But when Tim sat up again and weakly mopped his face he had a reward
worth far more to him than government medals--a silent grip of the hand
and a straight look in the eyes from his "looey," alive and once more
ready to carry on. No words were spoken. No words could have said what
eye spoke to eye in that long quiet minute there on the face of the
wall.
"Let's go," said Rand.
Carefully they turned about, and slowly they filed along the trail,
hugging the rock. Up at the top of the stair the green men stood
watching them go. Presently they drew back, and for the first time
sounds broke from them. With animal grunts, they fell on the stale food
left behind by the white men.
On along the narrow shelf the four adventurers trudged, looking down
into the dizzy depths no more than they had to. It led on and on,
widening at times, narrowing again, now roofed by overhangs of stone,
again open to the high blue sky. Under a jutting outcrop it burrowed,
and there it turned abruptly to the left. The marchers had rounded a
shoulder of the hill which had cut off their view to the west and south.
There, on a natural platform beyond the corner, they halted with sudden
murmurs. The jungle below was no longer without signs of man.
Perhaps a half mile farther on, in a wide waterless bay among steep
green mountain slopes, the trees were thinned out at the top of a
curving knoll. In that opening, dingy gray, showed the lines of stone
walls and a house--masked by intervening tree-tops, but unmistakable.
Whether men now dwelt there, what they did and why, were questions which
only closer approach could answer; but men had been there--men who built
with stone--and not so long ago. Otherwise the jungle would have
swallowed up the place.
Down toward it the high trail now dipped at a stiff grade for perhaps
three hundred yards. Then it vanished into trees, and at that point the
precipice also ended; the tree-clad slope was a slope only, not a drop.
The path must wind on down that green slant and then swing out to the
house-capped knoll. Was that knoll the end of the trail, the end of all
adventure, the lair of the dread ogre who swallowed missing men?
Suddenly the watchers started. A sullen, low, awful murmur was shooting
toward them from the farther mountains. Instantly the solid rock under
them quivered and swayed.
"Quake! Down!" barked McKay, falling prone.
The others dropped flat, hugging the stone. It moved sickeningly, became
still. A few seconds passed. It shuddered again, was motionless.
Up from the depths rolled several clangs of a deep-toned bell. From
somewhere below, seeming very near, broke a grinding roar followed by a
great thumping crash. The rock quivered once more, but this time as if
from a blow.
After a few minutes of waiting for another tremor, the prostrate men sat
up and looked around. Nothing seemed changed.
"Pretty easy," remarked Rand. "I'd hate to be caught up here in a hard
one."
"Something dropped, and mighty close," said Knowlton. He crept to the
edge and peered down. "Not along this side," he went on. "Maybe around
the corner." Rising, he stepped to the other side.
"Did ye hear the bell ring? 'Twas down there by that house," said Tim.
"That same dead-man's-bell we been hearin'----"
"Great guns!" Knowlton's voice broke in. "Look here!"
As they joined him, he pointed downward, then out along the shelf where
they had just passed. Below, a great chunk of the wall grinned up from
among crushed trees. Beyond, a long gap opened in the face of the cliff.
"This trail's closed forever," declared McKay. "Unless we can find some
new way out, we're in for life."
CHAPTER XXII
THE END OF THE TRAIL
Sunset, blood-red, burned behind the mountains.
Against its fiery flare the great misshapen bulks loomed dusky green
above the sinister gulf in which stood the stone-crowned knoll. In that
chasm the shadows were welling rapidly upward toward the top of the
eastern heights. Moving along the bottom of the bowl, the four invaders
found everything around them growing dim under the jungle canopy.
They had swung down the remainder of the steep trail without mishap, and
without meeting any living thing. Soon after entering the trees the path
had begun to zigzag back and forth along the steep, but no longer
precipitous, side of the towering hill; and now it had become merely a
succession of easy curves rambling on toward the walls guarding the
house hidden beyond the trees. Along it the file was passing at good
speed, each man still carrying his boots around his neck. As always,
Rand led, scanning all ahead and aside.
Abruptly he halted, jumped back, collided hard with McKay, who now was
second in line. Before him in the dimness a sinuous form moved slowly
out of the trail.
"Snake," he said. "Nearly stepped on him. Guess I'll put on my boots."
With more alacrity than caution, the others followed his example. The
odds and ends of equipment which had been carried in the battered
footgear were shaken tumbling on the dirt, and every man hastily jammed
his feet into the leather legs. By the time the lacing was completed and
they were once more protected to the knee, the swiftly deepening shadows
had grown so dense that it was difficult to find the articles they had
dropped. And the path was swallowed in gloom.
"Better halt here and eat," said McKay. "There'll be a good big moon in
a little while. Can't see our way now."
"Aw, we ain't got far to go," objected Tim. "And mebbe there's some
water ahead--I'm bone dry. And that low-lived snake's right round here
somewheres yet. Le's go a little ways."
His only answer was the sound of three pairs of jaws biting into the
last of the smoked meat supply. The others had accepted McKay's dictum.
With no further protest, he straightway clamped his jaws in a meat strip
of his own.
The meal was brief, both because of the meagerness of the provender and
the speed with which it was bolted. No man squatted or sat, for no man
knew how many reptiles might be within striking distance. In lieu of
water, each finished with a cigarette.
"No need of going without a smoke," said Knowlton. "We're in, we can't
get out, and anybody who spies my cigarette is welcome to come
a-running."
"Me, I'd like to see somethin' comin'--somethin' alive, I mean,"
declared Tim. "This place is too dang spooky. Ain't seen nothin' here
but one snake, ain't heard nothin'----"
Like a blow, the boom of a bell struck his words and knocked them into
nothing.
It came from the right. Solemnly it tolled a dozen times. Then it was
still.
No other sound followed, save the usual night noises from the gloomy
depths around. No human voice spoke. No dog barked. No cat or cow or
other domestic animal called. No squeak or rattle or bump or footfall
betokened the presence of men in that house somewhere near by. Even the
jungle noises here seemed weird, ghostly, echoing hollowly among the
surrounding heights. Tim shivered.
After a prolonged silence Rand spoke.
"A queer hole. Good thing we stopped here. We were heading into the
woods. Path curves back, probably, but we'd have blundered off it."
Nobody replied. All stood waiting for the moonlight.
At length it came. The obscurity grew less dense. Silvery patches of
light appeared here and there on the earth. The eyes of the waiting
men, already dilated wide by the darkness, made out clearly the shapes
of the near-by trees, but not the path. Vague even in daylight, that
trail now would not again be visible before sunrise.
But McKay moved over into a spot of light, studied his compass, and laid
a course for Rand.
"West-northwest. That'll fetch us out near that bell."
Rand, after contemplating his compass and the trees, nodded and dropped
the instrument back into his pocket. Now that he had the direction
firmly fixed in mind, his old jungle instinct would carry him straight,
despite necessary windings, without another consultation of the
magnetized needle. He turned and stepped away.
Slowly the party followed his lead, traveling in slants and detours, but
ever swinging back to the prescribed course as surely as if Rand's eyes
were glued to his compass instead of roving all about. They slumped into
muddy spots, turned sharp to dodge bowlders, straddled over down trees,
and in places chopped their way with the machetes. Nowhere did they find
flowing water. Their thirst, already keen, became acute discomfort as
the meat they had swallowed demanded liquid. But none spoke of it, or of
anything else.
All at once the trees opened. They halted at the edge of the forest,
looking up at the cleared knoll.
They saw only stumps, low shrubs, scattered trees of great girth, and,
at the top, a high stone wall, above which protruded the outline of a
long, low roof. For a time they studied the wall, seeking some moving
figure, but seeing none. Under the cold moon the hard gray pile fronted
the wilderness like a forgotten sepulcher guarding its dead.
Toward it the hard-bitten little column advanced, instinctively changing
formation to a line of skirmishers. Each man picked his own way around
tree or bush clump, but none fell behind or went far ahead of his
comrades. At times they paused to listen and watch; then went on.
Soon they stood under the old wall itself, looking along its length.
Nowhere could they see an opening. For a hundred feet or more it ran
straight north and south, then ended. Beyond rose the black mountains,
looking down in insensate savagery at the line of stones taken from them
by hands now mouldering and piled up to bar out whatever foes might
come, and at the four lost men who, all chance of return destroyed,
stood under them and looked about.
To the men themselves came a queer feeling that they were back in some
former life, outside the walls of some medieval robber baron's castle,
likely at any moment to be spied by mail-clad sentries above and riddled
with long shafts or dragged in and thrown to rot in some noisome
dungeon. Knowlton caught himself listening for the grind of steel-shod
feet above, the clink of armor, the rattle of a sword. Then he smiled at
his own folly. But the smile faded and his eyes widened. No martial
sound came to him; but another sound did.
Somewhere farther down, beyond the wall, a vaguely confused murmur
arose: a noise which might have been caused by shuffling feet combined
with low voices; a sound as if men, or pigs, or both, were moving
sluggishly about.
"Gripes! The dead guys are gittin' up out o' their graves!" breathed
Tim.
In truth, it seemed so. If living men moved on the other side of those
stones, they had little energy. There was no calling out, no song or
laugh; only a dead, brutish sound which neither increased nor died out
of the air.
McKay motioned along the wall and stole away. The others followed. Down
almost to the end they passed, and there they paused again. From across
the barrier that gruesome sound still came, more clearly now: grunting
voices, bestial snores, the faint slither of feet passing about as if
dragging in utter weariness. Something else came over, too--a rank odor
as of an unclean pen.
The captain gauged the wall--a good twelve feet high--as if meditating
an attempt to look over by climbing on the shoulders of some one of his
companions. But he decided otherwise and once more moved on, stopping
again at the end, or what seemed the end, of the rock line. It proved to
be a corner.
Around that corner the wall receded for perhaps forty feet, then turned
again and ran back to a sharp uplift of the ground. There it merged with
the shadows and the rising earth. It looked like a passageway leading
into some tunnel, which in turn might run back for many yards into the
steep slopes beyond. The spies had little doubt that such was the case.
The captain shook his head, signifying that further progress in this
direction now would lead them nowhere. They retraced their steps. To the
other end of the wall they passed, and around the corner they turned
without reconnoitering. Then they stopped in their tracks.
Drawn up in a close-ranked body, stolid and silent as if they had been
patiently awaiting the whites, stood ten men. Each held a rifle. Each
rifle was aimed at a white man's breast. And each eye behind the
gunsights glinted as coldly as that of a snake.
They were Indians all. But they were not green men; not Jiveros; not men
of the vanished Pachac. They were brutes; coppery brutes in human form.
Though the lower parts of their faces were half hidden by the leveled
rifles, their low foreheads, beady eyes, and bestial expressions were
clear enough in the moonlight. They were more merciless than animals.
And they held the lives of the intruders in the crooks of their trigger
fingers.
Yet, after the first shock of surprise, the four looked them over
coolly. One thing was very obvious--these were no dead men. They were
alive, well fed, armed with repeating rifles of the universal .44 bore.
The sight of those prosaic guns, threatening though they were, exerted a
steadying rather than an alarming influence on the soldiers of fortune.
Tim even grinned, though in a disgusted way.
"Faith, gittin' caught seems to be the best li'l thing we do," he
remarked. "Outside o' them Jiveros we caught on a fryin' pan, we ain't
licked nobody since we come in here. If I ever git back home I ain't
goin' to brag much about this trip. What's the word, cap? Drop and
shoot, or stick up our hands?"
"Stand fast." Then, in Spanish, McKay addressed the Indians.
"Do not fear. We are not enemies. Put down your guns."
The guns remained leveled. One of the Indians replied in a harsh growl.
"Go within."
"Within what? Where?"
"The gate."
The captain glanced along the wall.
"I see no gate."
"Go. You will find it."
He moved aside as he spoke, still covering McKay. The others likewise
slipped aside.
"We go."
And, with unhurried tread, they went. Flanked on one side by the wall,
on the other by the ready guns, they filed along toward the invisible
gate. As they passed, the Indians swung in behind, muzzles pointing at
the white men's spines.
Some distance beyond, a tree cast a deep, wide shadow on the wall. In
that shadow the Americans found a stout gate of rough timbers, standing
ajar. Three more of the brute-faced aborigines, also armed with guns,
stood there. These stepped in, swinging the gate wide enough to admit
two abreast. When brown men and white were all inside, the big barrier
was bumped shut. Heavy bars thumped into place.
The whites, looking rapidly about them, saw the front wall of the big
house; a bell suspended from a stout tripod near at hand; and a sort of
scaffolding running along the inside of the stockade walls, about four
feet below the top. The house front was pierced by a few high and
extremely narrow windows--scarcely more than loop holes--and a wide
doorway in which solid double doors stood slightly open. From the peak
of the low-pitched roof jutted jagged stones which at one time probably
had been a belfry, now ruined by some long-forgotten earth shock. The
bell, hanging within the triangle formed by logs solidly braced in the
hard-packed earth of the yard, was black with age. The scaffolding along
the walls formed a narrow runway where men could pass in patrol or fight
against enemies outside. If well manned, the place was virtually an
impregnable fortress against any jungle foe.
This much the four absorbed in their first survey of their surroundings.
Then their gaze riveted on the big door.
Slowly that door swung farther open. Beyond it a face showed dimly in
the shadow cast by the big tree outside. The Indians looked toward that
vague figure, and one of them spoke.
"They are here," he said.
The figure stood motionless a moment. The peering Americans saw that it
was not tall, and that against the gloomy background its face seemed
white. Then they nearly dropped. The figure replied; and its voice,
though clear, was soft and low--the voice of a woman.
"It is well. They shall come in."
As if the words were a cue, light shone in the darkness. The doors swung
wide. Prodded by the Indian, the amazed soldiers of fortune moved
forward, staring at a slender, graceful woman, bare-armed, black-haired
and red-lipped, gowned in clinging purple, who stood with head saucily
tilted and smiled at the shaggy men who had forced their way to the end
of the long trail of the Tigre Yacu. Around her stood light-skinned
Indian damsels, nearly nude, holding bare-flamed lights.
Across the threshold passed the four, and down a bare corridor the bevy
of girls and their mistress retreated before them. The Indian men
remained outside, and one of them reached and swung the door shut. The
lights passed into a side wall, and the white men followed. They found
themselves in a big room hung about with the same purplish cloth worn by
the woman, in the middle of which stood a massive table from whose top
flashed yellow gleams as the lights moved.
"Bienvenido! Welcome!" smiled the woman. "You have traveled far. Have
you hunger and thirst?"
The eyes of the four searched the room. No men lurked there. They
relaxed, smiled in reply, and doffed their battered hats.
"Thirst we have, señorita," answered Knowlton. "A thirst that gnaws. But
not hunger."
"It shall be quenched."
She made a sign, and the girls, who now had set their yellow lamps on
little wall brackets, went out by another doorway.
"Sit, señores," added the mistress of the house, nodding toward a long
padded couch. "Water shall be brought for bathing, and I myself shall
prepare that which will banish weariness."
With another smile she disappeared through the other doorway. Still
almost dumb with amazement, the men sat down on the couch, unconsciously
gripping their guns, and staring all about.
"Gee cripes!" breathed Tim. "Whaddye know about this? We come lookin'
for dead men, and we tumble into a harem!"
CHAPTER XXIII
CIRCE
Four girls, bearing wide yellow basins, entered and crossed the room.
Each stooped before one of the men, holding the bowl at the level of his
knees. Restraining an impulse to snatch the vessels and drink the cool
water in them, the travel-stained men laid their guns aside and immersed
their hands. As they did so, each narrowly scanned the basins.
"Gold!" was their conviction.
The yellow metal could hardly be anything else. It certainly was not
brass. The yellow lamps, too, and the gleaming things on the table--all
must be gold.
"Gee cripes!" Tim whispered again. "This place is a reg'lar mint!"
"Looks like it," agreed Knowlton. "First time I ever washed my face in
gold, anyhow."
Running a hand down his face to squeeze the water from his beard, he
reached with the other for a small towel hanging over an arm of the girl
serving him. As he did so, she bent nearer and whispered something.
The sibilant words meant nothing to him. Puzzled, he stared into her
face. Then he blinked, rubbed his watery eyes, and stared again.
He was looking into the brown eyes of one of the wives of José.
A glance at the other girlish faces told him that they also were of the
winsome daughters of Pachac. Not only that, but they were of the five
whom the son of the Conquistadores had taken as his brides. Only one of
the five was missing, and she must be among those now beyond the
doorway.
In the wavering lights, which did not fully illumine the room, the
Americans had not previously recognized the girls. For that matter, they
had paid scant attention to them in their amazement at finding
themselves amid such unexpected surroundings. But now a startled grunt
from Tim, whose eye for feminine charms never remained blind long,
showed that he, too, had realized who these girls were. McKay and Rand,
after a glance at him, also looked more carefully at the faces so near
theirs. Their lifted brows revealed their recognition.
Knowlton's girl whispered again. Again he could not understand. Her face
fell, but she moved her head a little backward, toward the door where
the purple woman had gone out. In her eyes was a plain warning against
something.
The blond man nodded to show that he comprehended her effort to caution
him, though unaware of just what the effort signified. Then he toweled
his face and gave her the wet cloth. She turned away.
"Keep an eye peeled, fellows," he muttered. "Something slippery around
here. Can't tell what's in that next room, for instance."
"Wear your poker face," advised McKay. "Don't show that we know the
girls. Maybe we're not supposed to."
Then through that farther doorway came the fair-skinned woman in purple.
Behind her advanced girls bearing a large steaming pot and several cups
of the same lustrous golden hue. Eying them keenly, the men saw that
among them was the fifth bride of José. And, remembering that the chief
of the white Indians had had nine daughters, and noting features of
resemblance among all these girls, they concluded that every one of them
was of the blood of Pachac. But each man kept out of his face any sign
of recognition, or even of interest.
They arose, as if in honor to their returning hostess. But in doing so
they unobtrusively picked up their rifles and glanced beyond her to spy
any furtive movement in the room beyond. No menace showed itself. The
purple woman looked at their guns with an expression of amused contempt.
"Have no fear, my friends," she said. "Within these walls no guns are
needed. Here are only rest and welcome after a long journey."
"Your men gave us a strange welcome," McKay asserted.
"Ah, but you then were outside the walls! In this wild land one must be
on guard against all who come, until one knows them for friends. Of what
country are you, Señor Gold Hair?"
Her long-lashed eyes had turned to Knowlton, whose tumbled hair shone
under the light of a near-by lamp.
"Of the United States of North America, señorita. We all are of the same
land."
"So? I have never seen one like you," she naïvely confessed. "Nor like
this one whose hair is so red. These two," nodding at McKay and Rand,
"might be men of Spain. But come, let us quench the thirst with
guayusa."
She turned toward the stout table, on which the great golden pot now had
been placed. With another quick look toward the door beyond her, the men
laid their rifles back on the couch and moved toward the steaming bowl.
Deftly she dipped up cupfuls of the hot liquid and set them along the
edge. After a bit of maneuvering, the four took positions along a bench
beside the table, where they could watch doors and their hostess, too.
And, though consumed by thirst, none lifted his cup just yet.
They knew the guayusa tea well enough--an infusion from the leaves of a
wild shrub found here and there in the upper Amazon country, which, like
the yerba maté of Paraguay, exhilarates the drinker and banishes
weariness. They were fatigued enough and thirsty enough to consume cup
after cup of it. But they were also on their guard against anything and
everything, and they waited for her to drink first.
"You do not like the guayusa, no?" she asked, dipping up a measure for
herself.
"It is hot," Knowlton evaded. "And in my country it is the custom to
await the pleasure of the hostess."
Her dark eyes smiled wisely at him. She lifted her cup, sipped at it,
drank in little mouthfuls, set it down empty.
"Of what are you afraid, Señor Gold Hair?" she mocked. "Should I let you
pass my guards only to poison you?"
The lieutenant flushed and raised his drink.
"To you, señorita," he bowed. "The most beautiful woman I have seen in
many a long day."
Which was not quite so florid a compliment as it sounded. For many days
he had seen no white women whatever. But she took it at its face value,
and as he smiled and quaffed the stimulating draft her eyes caressed
him.
"Oh boy!" Tim gurgled into his cup. "Ain't he the bear-cat, though! Feed
her a li'l more taffy, looey, and she'll be settin' in yer lap."
McKay choked suddenly, spilling half his guayusa. Rand bit the edge of
his cup to hold his face straight. Tim gurgled again and swallowed the
tea in two gulps. Knowlton expressed a hope that he might speedily
choke.
The dark eyes watching them narrowed, and a glint of anger showed in
them. Though the alien words meant nothing to her, the suppressed mirth
among the men hinted at something uncomplimentary--else why should it be
suppressed? But she said nothing. She signed to one of the girls, who
refilled her cup.
For a minute or two all sat frankly looking at her. They saw that she
was indubitably Spanish, of blood pure or nearly pure; that she was not
altogether beautiful--the features were a trifle coarse--but far from
ill-favored: of Castilian countenance, shapely form, and mature
years--mature, that is, for the tropics; perhaps twenty-five. Her red
lips, thin but pouting a little; her eyes, with a hint of passion in
their depths; her languorous movements and her sidelong glances--all
were sensuous and sophisticated. Her dress, they now noticed, was only a
sleeveless frock of llanchama bark cloth dyed with achote, ending at the
knee, drawn tight at the waist by a broad girdle of the same material.
And from that girdle, slanting a little forward, jutted the hilt of a
poniard.
In his mind each man labeled her: "Dangerous."
Yet there was no hint of danger in her manner as she now studied each
man's face in turn--and not only his face but the hardy frame beneath
it. To three of those figures she gave fully as much attention as to
eyes and jaws and expressions. Her gaze hovered a little curiously on
Tim's red hair and beard, but she scanned his muscular body with more
interest than his wide countenance. On McKay's stalwart frame and Rand's
solid build she bestowed thoughtful looks. But on Knowlton's thick,
uncut yellow hair, golden beard, and twinkling blue eyes her gaze
lingered; and under her lashes burned a soft glow of approval and
allure.
"Ye've started somethin', looey," murmured Tim, sotto voce. "Us three
guys are jest hunks o' beef, but li'l Angel-Face Knowlton is the candy
kid."
"Shut up, you poor fish!" requested the badgered man. Then he gulped his
second cup of guayusa, noting, as he did so, that the woman now was
eying the red-haired man in evident dislike. Tim was rapidly putting
himself out of favor.
After another wordless minute or so of tea drinking, the woman turned
her gaze again to Knowlton.
"What do you seek here?" she asked abruptly.
Involuntarily each man's glance darted to the great gold pot on the
table. She threw back her head and laughed in a scornful way.
"You come for gold, yes? I knew it must be so. For that yellow trash men
dare all. And when they have it, what then?
"Where gold is, there death is also. So my fathers have learned. Many
years ago they found gold here. They fought the wild men, they made
their captives build these walls, they mined the gold--and what then?
"The earth shook and the mountains broke and slid. The way in and out of
this gulf closed. There was no escape except the long way down the
Tigre, through savages who let no man pass. So my fathers stayed here
with their gold, which was worth nothing--what is gold in such a place
as this?
"Still they mined and got more gold, against the day when another
temblor should open a new way out. It came, the terrible
earth-shaking--and did it open a way? No! It crushed the mines,
destroyed the men in them, buried even the gold which my fathers had
taken out and stored in a walled-up cave. And so they died, and I alone
am left--Flora Almagro, last of the fighting family that would tear
wealth from the savage mountains of the Pastassa.
"I, and Indians, and tumbling walls, and a few paltry utensils which my
fathers made from their gold--that is all. But the gold is in these
mountains round about. Dig, señores, dig! Ha, ha, ha! In twenty years of
digging you may reach that which my fathers reached--and then be crushed
like them!"
Again she laughed--a mocking laugh with a wild note in it.
"Four lifetimes of fighting man and beast and jungle and devil-rock--and
this to show for it!" she shrilled, with a contemptuous wave toward
golden cups and bowls and lamps. "If you would find gold and keep it,
friends, bring in an army--bring in cannon--blow off the tops of these
mountains until they can no longer fall--then perhaps, if the jungle men
will let you, you can pick up your treasure in safety."
None answered. All thought of the slight earth shock only a few hours
past, of the fall of the cliff and the destruction of the trail. Her
words rang true. And if they were true, Fate had tricked them into a
barren trap indeed.
Thoughtfully they drained their cups a third time. The potent stimulant
already had routed their fatigue, and now their minds were leaping
nimbly from one thing to another--the quake, the mysterious green men
above, the obvious servitude of the Pachac girls, the sinister absence
of the rest of the tribe and of José--a dozen other things in incoherent
sequence, all of which perplexed and disturbed them. At length McKay
bluntly asked:
"How did you know we were coming?"
The suddenness of the query did not disturb her. Widening her eyes in
mock innocence, she returned: "The approach of travelers always is
known. The little parrots of the forest sent the word."
"Ah. Green parrots, no doubt."
"All parrots here are green, Señor Black Beard," was her laughing
retort.
"So. And they drum with their wings to send their news."
At that her smile vanished. Involuntarily her hand darted to her dagger
hilt, and she threw a look toward the outer door. The gesture, the look,
were strikingly similar to the fearful attitudes of the green men on
hearing the distant drums.
"Valgame Dios! Those drums!" she breathed. Then her head turned back and
lifted again. "But no, you have it wrong. You have heard drums, yes?
They are drums of the men who cut off the head and make it small--the
hunters of the heads of men and the bodies of women--the old enemies of
my fathers. Their land is beyond the mountains to the west, but they
come at times--many of their bones lie in this gulf, where they died in
fight. We have lived only because they came in scattered raiding bands.
If ever they come in an army----"
Her hand tightened on the hilt. With another swift change she laughed
out, the same wild laugh as before.
"They may capture the head of me, but that is all!" she vowed. "Flora
Almagro never goes a captive to the hut of an Indian--not while good
steel can reach her heart! But--caramba! let us forget them. To-morrow
death may come, but to-night let us live! Now that the guayusa has
rested you, there is a stronger draft of friendship for strong men who
have dared the Tigre and come to me here."
She signed again to the girls, who had been standing mute behind her.
Three of them turned toward the rear room. Among those who stayed was
the one who had attempted to convey a warning to Knowlton. Now she
looked straight at him and again tried, by furtive nods at her mistress,
to caution him. Puzzled, he stared back at her.
"Why do you look so at my maidens?" demanded Flora Almagro. Her eyes
were narrowed again, and she watched Knowlton as if trying to read his
thoughts.
"I was wondering, Señorita Flora," he coolly replied, "how, in this wild
place, you obtained such handsome slaves. For Indians, they are almost
beautiful."
His tone implied that they were not to be compared in beauty with their
mistress. The subtle flattery was not lost. She smiled again. But her
eyes still searched his.
"You look as if you thought you knew them, señor."
"One of them resembles a girl I saw months ago, far up the Marañon," he
lied serenely. "But she cannot be the same. That one was taller."
For a moment longer she studied him. He carefully preserved his "poker
face." The suspicion faded from her eyes.
"But no, Señor Gold Hair. All of these have been with me for years. They
are of the people who served my fathers. Now they shall serve----"
A stumble and a slight confusion at the door halted her. The three girls
were returning, bearing another great golden bowl. One of them had
tripped, and all three were struggling to keep the heavy vessel from
falling. From it splashed a reddish liquor.
A flash of anger twisted the face of Flora. Her dagger leaped out, and
with a feline spring she darted at the trio.
"Pigs! Lizards! She-dogs!" she screamed. "Have care! If you drop the
wine, clumsy beasts, you shall feel the point of this!"
The three caught their balance, steadied the bowl, and bore it dripping
to the table. The purple-clad woman, her breast still heaving with fury,
looked down at what had been spilled, spun toward the table, her poniard
half raised--and caught the cool stare of four pairs of American eyes.
After a silent minute she slipped the weapon back into her girdle and
laughed in a forced way.
"I forget myself," she said. "But this wine, señores--it is old,
precious. To see it cast on the floor by footless fools--it is too much.
But now it is safe. Let us drink deep--of the wine of life--and love!"
With the last words her eyes burned deep into those of Señor Gold Hair,
whom she had plainly selected as recipient for other favors to come.
"Hm! This is getting a bit thick," thought the blond man. "But the
evening's young yet, and if she drinks enough she may blab a lot of
interesting things. On with the dance!"
Wherefore he smiled blandly at the señorita, accepted the cup tendered
him, and gazed appreciatively at the fragrant contents. Red wine in a
cup of gold, tendered by a seductive woman in a room hung with purple
and lit by golden lamps, with nude maidens at hand to pour new
drafts--here in a jungle chasm into which he and his comrades had been
driven by green-skinned creatures at the points of poisoned spears! It
seemed an impossible dream, from which he soon must awake to find
himself again in a gloomy pole-and-palm camp surrounded by avid tigres.
Glancing at McKay, he found the same feeling reflected in the gray eyes
contemplating the scene.
"You have not yet told me your names, my friends," the last of the
Almagros reminded them. "Now let us drink to each of my guests in turn,
and then you shall tell me of your travels, yes? To-morrow, if my poor
hospitality has pleased you, we shall talk more seriously--of those
things which are to come. But now----"
She nodded and lifted her cup to Señor Gold Hair, who promptly arose.
"My name, Señorita Flora, is Meredith Knowlton, an humble member of this
party commanded by----"
He paused. Behind their mistress' back two of the Pachac girls were
frantically signaling at him. This time there was no chance of
misunderstanding. They were pointing at his cup and shaking their heads:
warning him not to drink of it.
"----commanded by El Capitán Roderick McKay," the lieutenant went on,
"the caballero seated at my right----"
There he let the cup slip from his fingers and drop.
"Don't drink, fellows!" he snapped in English. "It's doped!"
"By cripes, and there's a row outside!" yelped Tim. "Hear it?"
A low muttering sound beyond the house walls flared into a snarling roar
of hatred. Sharp yells--a bumping, splintering sound--a sudden roar of
gunshots. With a bound the men threw themselves on their rifles.
CHAPTER XXIV
LOST SOULS
"O Santo Dios!" screamed Flora Almagro. "Las bestias--the beasts are
out!"
If the fighting creatures outside were animals, then they were animals
with the voices of men. They yelled, screeched, howled in a bedlam of
blows and crashes punctuated by the recurrent rifle shots. Yet beneath
the human voices sounded a ferocious undertone of bestial grunts and
snarls: a fearsome, inarticulate growl more appalling than the death
shrieks momentarily scaling high and breaking off short.
"Where away, cap?" called Tim, gun cocked and pistol loosened for a
quick draw.
"Stay here!" snapped McKay. "Back behind the table! Heave it over!"
"That's the stuff," approved Knowlton, glancing at the high wall slits.
From the outside no man could shoot through those openings, nor could
any creature larger than a house cat squeeze in at them. With the wall
at their backs, the massive table as a bulwark, and only two entrances,
they could hold this strong room against all comers until their
ammunition ran out--and even longer, with their machetes.
They leaped around the table, tugged at one edge, swung it up and let
its heavy top slam down with a crushing thump. The gold bowl and cups
clanged on the stone floor, the liquor splashing on the purple dress of
the woman and the bare legs of the girls.
"Here!" ordered the captain, pointing. Flora, her poniard gleaming,
dashed around the table and sought to get behind them. The Indian girls
followed with less speed--in fact, they seemed unafraid and kept looking
at the doors.
"No, madam," McKay said darkly. "You do not stand at our backs with that
knife. Over there, if you please--farther along."
"Cristo!" she spat. "You think me an assassin? You would let them kill
me----"
"We let no man kill you. But we know what was in the wine!"
It was a snap shot, but it scored. Her face blanched, her eyes and mouth
opened, and she slipped away from him, poniard up in a position of
defense.
"Over there!" he repeated inexorably, pointing again. "And stay there!"
Several feet away, still staring at his bleak face, she stopped where he
had designated: protected by the upturned table, but beyond reach of any
of her defenders. Still farther on, the daughters of Pachac clustered
well away from her, and in their faces now plainly showed sullen hatred
of the woman they had served.
"Lights out along here!" commanded McKay, knocking a lamp from its
bracket with his rifle muzzle. The others threw the lights nearest them
to the floor and trampled on the oil which splashed out, killing the
flame. That side of the room now was very dim, while the two entrances
were well illumined.
Two nude figures came slipping in at the farther doorway. Four rifles
darted to an aim. But they sank without a shot. The pair were
women--daughters of Pachac.
At sight of them Flora Almagro hissed like a cat.
"You devils!" she screamed. "You, you freed the beasts! You opened the
gates! When they are driven back I kill you!"
Whether the girls understood the Spanish words or not, they evidently
recognized the accusation and cared nothing for the threat. Their lips
curled and their heads lifted in a defiant gesture worthy of their
maddened mistress herself. Tauntingly one pointed toward the infernal
tumult outside. The other flashed her teeth in a triumphant smile.
Obviously they were not only guilty but proud of it.
Infuriated by their insolence, she sprang at them with dagger uplifted,
forgetful of the shoulder-high table top intervening. She collided with
the solid barrier so forcibly that the blow crumpled her gasping to the
floor. The poniard fell from her hand. The Indian girls near her surged
forward.
But, sensing the menace from those whom so recently she had threatened,
she closed a hand over the weapon and lifted its point against them.
They paused, hesitated, hung back. Holding them off with gleaming blade
and blazing eyes, she hitched back to the wall and leaned against it,
struggling to regain her breath.
Outside the conflict was advancing under the unglassed slits serving as
windows, ventilators, and loop holes. The gunshots had dwindled to an
occasional blunt roar, and those inside heard more clearly the impacts
of blows, the gasping grunts of close-locked antagonists, the moans of
wounded and dying. Thus far no man had entered the house. A stubborn
hand-to-hand battle evidently was going on, with one side slowly gaining
ground. Through the turmoil sounded a hoarse voice exhorting:
"At them, camaradas! Over them, esclavos! Kill! Kill! Butcher the
accursed torturers! Strike! Bite! Crush their skulls! Kill! Kill!"
Rand, after scanning the hollow embrasure of a slit above him, clambered
up to its firing-step and leaned into the opening, peering down. Out
there in the moonlight he saw wrenching, wrestling figures heaving about
in mortal combat--naked arms and knotted fists clutching clubs, rising
and battering down--shaggy heads and hulking shoulders hurling
themselves past at some foe just beyond--distorted, red-smeared faces
falling backward in death--the flare of an exploding rifle. Over the
fighting forms hung a haze of dust and powder smoke, and from them rose
the rank odor of bodies long unwashed. Yet, despite the blur, despite
the animal smell, the peering man in the wall was sure some of those
battling bodies were white.
This was no Jivero attack. It was an eruption within the walls of the
fortress itself. In Rand's mind burned the word he had just heard from
the throat of that unseen leader--"esclavos"--slaves.
It came again, from almost under him: that savage voice, that same word.
"Hah! El capataz de esclavos--the slave driver--the foreman! Welcome,
señor--welcome to death and hell!"
Back into Rand's range of vision reeled a stocky, brutal-visaged Indian,
a rifle clutched aloft in his fists. He struck downward. The gun was
torn from his grip. A long, lean white body, topped by a black-bearded
face split in a grin of hate, leaped into view, swinging down the
captured gun with terrific power. The crunching thud of the blow sounded
above the rest of the tumult. The Indian capataz collapsed, his head a
red ruin.
"Hah!" croaked the deadly voice again. "I have long owed you that blow,
you fiend--how do you like it? On, camaradas! They break! On to the
doors!"
In another bound he was gone. So swift had been his movement that the
watcher's brain retained only a fleeting memory of black hair and
grinning teeth. Before his eyes now passed a surging hurlyburly of other
black heads, upshooting arms, lurching bodies----
"Dave!" crackled McKay's voice.
At the same instant came a struggling, thumping noise from the outer
door. Rand jumped down and took his place in the line.
Bump--bump--bump--a grinding creak--another struggling sound. Then that
hoarse voice again.
"So, you pig! You would block the door, hah? You hug the wood, hah? Then
hang your brains on it to show your love for it!"
Another bump, followed by the thud of a falling body. Hoarse breathing,
the slap of bare feet in the corridor, and a triumphant yell.
"Now for that hell-cat who steals the brains of men! Let her drink her
own devil-brew and----Por Dios, what is this?"
Into the room bounded the lean killer of the capataz de esclavos,
followed close by his naked fighting mates. At sight of the upturned
table, the four grim figures behind it, and the gun muzzles grinning at
him, he halted in his tracks. Slit-eyed he peered into the dimness along
that farther wall, and his jaw dropped. At the same instant four
trigger fingers slacked their tension, and across the faces of the
Americans darted the light of recognition.
"Begorry, it's Hozy!" rumbled Tim.
José it was. But not the same José whom they had last seen. He was naked
as any wild man of the jungle: naked as the men pressing in at his back,
none of whom had a rag of clothing save a narrow loin clout. His black
hair and beard, which he had always kept scrupulously clean, now were
dingy and matted with dirt, and half his face was smeared red from a
gash on his forehead. But, despite his dirt and blood, notwithstanding
his loss of clothing and kerchief and machete and knife, there was no
mistaking his hawk face and his tigerish poise. And behind him showed
the saturnine countenance of Pachac, his adopted father.
"Ho! It is the Señor Tim and----But quick, my friends, tell me! You have
not eaten food given you by that woman Almagro--where is that foul
corrupter?--you have not drunk of her cheer? Quick, señores, before it
becomes too late!"
"Only some guayusa," answered Knowlton. "Make that gang of yours keep
back!"
Without turning his head, José ripped out commands in Spanish and some
Indian tongue. The men behind, who had been shoving to get past, stood
still.
"And you feel alert, amigos? You feel no heaviness coming on you? No?"
"No."
"Bueno! Then you are safe. But lower the guns, friends--these are no
enemies of yours. They are poor creatures much abused, who at last break
free from the vilest slavery ever laid on men. All they now seek is the
cruel cat who made them what they are. Sí, and I, too, hunt her! Where
is she?"
Knowlton, glancing sidelong toward Flora, found her still on the floor
below the table top. But she was no longer leaning against the wall.
Crouching, her poniard still lifted and menacing, she was creeping
closer to the wooden bulwark between her and her foes, hiding from them
and darting looks here and there like a cornered wild thing seeking a
line of escape and finding none.
"Why?" curtly demanded McKay.
"Why?" echoed the naked outlaw, his voice strident. "Why? Use your eyes,
Capitán McKay, and see! See what you, too, would have been in another
day!"
He turned on his heel and grunted monosyllables at those behind. Then he
walked before them to the middle of the room, eyed the still ready
rifles and the hard faces above them, laughed harshly, and drew an
imaginary dead-line with one extended toe. Turning again, he extended
his arms sidewise as a sign to his followers that none should advance
beyond that line. Over one shoulder he jeered:
"Look at them, capitán--and see yourself in them! Are they not
handsome?"
The captain and his companions looked. They saw men whom they recognized
as members of the band of Pachac. They saw others, both white and brown,
whose faces were new. And in those visages they found something that
sent a chill crawling up their backs.
Many of those faces still were working with blood lust, many of the
savage eyes were hot with unquenched thirst for revenge. But they were
brutish, those countenances--the faces of men debased; and the eyes were
those of animals--of dogs, of pigs, but not of men. Some of them were
grimacing like caged lions; some grinned without mirth; more were
sullen, sodden; and all, or nearly all, were well-nigh empty of human
intelligence. Behind those leering masks dwelt darkened minds which
responded to the commands of José only as the mentalities of broken
beasts respond to the crack of a whip.
"Bestias," the woman had called them; and "bestias" they were. For that
Spanish word means, not only "beast," but "idiot." These men were both.
Nor was that all. On the bare bodies shifting about were welts of slave
whips--not only welts, but cruel scars years old. And among them moved
some which stepped jerkily, as if partly crippled. As those
short-stepping men came to the edge, where the lights struck them fair,
the reason for their grotesque gait was revealed. Like Rafael Pardo, who
had stumbled into Iquitos with madman's gold; like the unknown mestizo
speared in the back on the ridge trail, those men were maimed--their
toes amputated. And each of the cripples was white.
"Look at them!" José mocked again. "Look at the missing men of the Tigre
Yacu! Here they are, all but those who have died by torture and suicide
and the fight this night. Look at the faces of men who were as brave and
quick of wit as any of you señores! Look at the bodies that dared all
hardships, to find such a fate! Look at the feet that carried them
through savages and tigres and snakes--to this! Hah! And ask again why
we hunt the evil woman who did this thing!"
Once more he faced the four who had been his partners. His voice sank to
a low, deadly level. His eyes roved from man to man, glittering with
ruthless determination.
"Señores, you have been my friends. All--except perhaps you,
McKay--still are my friends, if you wish. But we will have that woman,
whether you protect her or not. If you try to block us we fight--and you
die. In spite of your guns, your pistols, your many bullets, your
steel--you die. We are too many and too near, and you cannot get us all
before you go under. And if you die so, you die as fools.
"I cannot hold these tortured men from their vengeance on her if I
would. And I will not try. We will avenge ourselves, and we will do it
now. Decide quickly what you will do."
Every man of the four knew he spoke the cold truth. If his implacable
tone had not driven home his inflexible decision, the sight of those
lowering faces behind him would have confirmed it to the last degree.
Yet the woman was a woman; they were white men; and they would not hand
over any woman, no matter what she might have done, to such a mob as
that.
There was a tense pause. Then the outlaw's mouth twisted in a mirthless
smile. He shifted his gaze toward his wives and their sisters, bunched
behind the table and watching the parley without fear but with
spellbound interest. He studied the gap between them and Knowlton, who
was Number Four in the defensive line. He glanced at the girls. In
answer to his unspoken question, one of them pointed downward at the
hidden woman.
"So!" he said. "She is there, hiding her cowardly body, as I thought.
Shoot if you will, you who were my friends. I go to whisper sweet words
in her ear."
He dropped the rifle captured from the capataz, which he had been
holding as a club. Empty-handed, he strode toward the spot where the
woman crouched.
But he had no need to lean over the bulwark and look for her. As he
lifted a foot for the last step she sprang up.
"Sí! I am here, pig!" she screamed. "Take me--and take this with me!"
Like a striking snake she threw herself at him. Her poniard thrust for
his throat.
Then it was that the outlaw's quickness, which more than once in the
past had preserved his life, saved him once more. Swift as was her stab,
his recoil was a shade swifter. In one backward leap he was four feet
away, grinning like a snarling jungle cat. She fell forward on the
upturned table edge, balked by the wood wall that had hidden her.
But hardly had she touched it when, with another lightning movement, she
threw herself up and back on her feet. Her eyes blazed with insane
fires.
"Live, then, animal!" she shrieked. "Here is one well-beloved, who goes
to death with me!"
Like a flash she sprang at Knowlton, her Señor Gold Hair. Her upraised
dagger darted for his heart.
"Come, my golden one----" she panted as she struck.
Instinctively the lieutenant sidestepped and snapped his rifle upward in
a parry. The barrel caught her wrist and blocked its slanting swoop. In
the next flashing instant she was seized from behind and hurled down.
The wives of José, daughters of a fighting chief who belted his waist
with the hair of his foes, had leaped. Maddened by the stab at their
man, they were jumping forward even as she turned to Knowlton. Now they
were on her like tigresses, tearing at her face, twisting the poniard
from her hand. Screams of hate echoed in the room.
As José and his band hurled themselves at the table, as the Americans
surged forward, something bright and keen rose out of the knot of
struggling women. Like a lightning flash it fell.
Slowly, still quivering with rage, the daughters of Pachac arose and
stepped back.
Flora, the last of the Almagros, the jungle Circe who changed men to
beasts with her terrible drink, the enslaver of the missing men of the
Tigre Yacu, lay still, her own dagger buried to the hilt in her breast.
CHAPTER XXV
THE DEVIL'S BREW
For a long minute the big room of purple and gold was still. In the
silence the only sounds were the breathing of men and the soft flutter
of flames blown about in the gold lamps by a breeze stealing in at the
loop holes.
Then three groups again became conscious of one another. The Americans
looked up at the Indian girls whose explosion of fury had swept their
tyrant into death. Then both men and women faced toward the staring
creatures now hanging over the edge of the table.
Vague though the minds of those lost men might be, they had no
difficulty in grasping what they saw. Violent death being as old as life
itself, perception and understanding of it is instinctive in all
creatures. And these men still possessed eyes to see and instinct to
interpret. Gazing down at the motionless figure, the blanched face, and
the sinister handle jutting from the still bosom, they gradually drew
back and let their clouded eyes rove among the gold vessels bestrewing
the floor. The fight was done, the enemy dead, and their groping brains
already were forgetful of it all.
One among them, besides José, seemed more alert--grim old Pachac, whose
gaze rested watchfully on the Americans. Yet his face was hard set, as
if it were an effort to concentrate his attention and hold it
unwavering. The blight on the minds of the rest evidently had touched
his also, but lightly. Among the whole crew the only one retaining full
mental vigor was the indomitable son of the Conquistadores, José
Martinez.
Now that outlaw did a strange thing. Over the body of the woman whom he
had just sought in implacable vengefulness, over the poniard which had
licked out at his throat a few minutes ago, he made the sign of the
cross.
"Sea como Dios quiera," he said soberly. "As God wills, so let it be."
But there was no hint of regret or forgiveness in his tone, or in the
face he turned first to his followers and then to his erstwhile partners
of the Tigre Yacu.
The Americans had let their guns sink while they looked down on the
woman. They did not lift them again. With the butts grounded, they
looked pityingly at the hulking wrecks of manhood beyond the barrier.
Even McKay's iron face showed his feeling for those poor creatures,
tortured, maimed, darkened in mind. For the moment he had forgotten
José. And José, studying him, suddenly stepped toward him.
"Capitán," he said impulsively, "I have been a hot-headed fool."
McKay's gray eyes met his. McKay's set mouth softened.
"And I, José, have been a bull-headed jackass."
Their right hands shot across the barrier and gripped hard.
"That is a queer animal, capitán--a burro with a bull head," grinned the
Peruvian. "And it has no right to live. So let it not come between us
again."
"It won't."
The hands parted. Both men looked again at the human herd, and down at
the quiet woman on the floor.
"Does this end it, José?" asked Rand, nodding down at her.
"This ends it, comrades. Unless some of those slave-driving Indios
outside escaped--and I do not think it--this whole nest of devils is
cleaned. Now we have more cleaning to do: to clean this room and the
yard and ourselves. Whether we can clean the minds of these poor people
I do not know, but we can clean our bodies, and it shall be done. Then
there will be a tale to tell."
"Then let's be at it," said Knowlton, wrinkling his nose at the rank
smell filling the room. "You clean up outside and we'll fix up here. And
for humanity's sake give this crowd a bath."
"It is not their fault, Señor Knowlton. Wait until you see the sty they
were forced to herd in, poor devils! Sí, and I with them--I am one of
them, except that my brain is clear. And that it is clear I owe not to
myself but to Huarma, one of my brides--the tallest one, yonder. But of
that you shall hear later."
He touched Pachac on the shoulder and muttered something. The chief's
face relaxed, as if it were a relief to have no longer to try to think,
and he turned docilely to follow the lead of his stalwart foster-son.
José's voice began to snap in commands, and his hand pointed toward the
corridor. At once the listless, aimless crowd became alive and began to
press out of the room. The Peruvian followed them up, rounding up
stragglers, knocking a gold cup out of one man's hand, shaking to his
feet another who had lain down on the floor and closed his eyes. Last of
all, he and Pachac passed out, side by side.
The Indian girls had drawn away from the table now and stood grouped at
the rear doorway, seeming a little afraid of the bearded men but not in
the least awed by the realization of what they had done to their
mistress. The Americans gave them no further attention.
Leaning their guns against the wall, they moved out the table and swung
it back on its legs. Rand and Tim stooped and lifted the quiet form from
the floor. Up on the board they laid her, and just below the hilt of the
poniard they crossed the hands which had sought to wield it in death
strokes when, brought to bay by the beasts she had made, she thought to
take with her the leader of the pack or the stranger on whom her
sensuous fancy had settled.
Then, moving about the room, the four gathered up the scattered cups and
ornaments and the big bowl which, with its venomed liquor, had been
thrown over by the upturning of the table. These they placed around her,
the bowl inverted at her head, the cups and heavy ornaments down the
sides in gleaming array. When this was done they pulled from the wall a
long section of the achote-dyed hangings, and this they stretched along
over the table top. Then they picked up their rifles and moved over
toward the door.
What they could do they had done. On the dim side of the room the last
of the Almagros now rested under a purple shroud, surrounded by the gold
with which she had sought to betray four more men into hopeless misery
worse than death. And the men, keenly alert, were masters of her house
and about to explore its secrets.
McKay paused and glanced around.
"Better leave one man here," he decided.
"What for?" wondered Knowlton. "Nothing to guard against in this room."
"Maybe. But Indians are Indians--a knife is a knife--gold is gold."
Rand nodded. The girls still stood as if waiting for them to withdraw.
And the captain was determined that there should be no pilfering from
that shrouded table.
"I'll stay," he volunteered. "Go ahead."
He stepped back to the couch and sat down. The others lifted lamps from
the brackets and went out.
In the corridor they found the big double entrance door standing wide,
gaping vacantly at the moonlit yard, whence sounded the shuffle of bare
feet and occasional orders from José. Along the passage other doors, all
closed, showed in the soft lamplight. Nowhere was any staircase. The
living quarters in this broad, low house were all on one floor.
McKay flung open the nearest door, advanced his lamp, and looked around.
Then he stepped back.
"This is her room," he said. "Bring her in here."
The other pair complied. Back to the table they went, and slowly they
returned, bearing with them the shrouded figure. While the captain
lighted the way they took her to a great canopied bed and laid her down.
Then they drew the purple curtains and left her in her last sleep.
Though they glanced around the room, they did not linger. Their roving
eyes took in the lines of the high bed, various massive articles of
furniture evidently built from some cabinet wood cut in the surrounding
jungle, a number of old tapestries about the walls, and numerous gold
ornaments carelessly strewn about on stands and drawer chests. There was
no sign of occupancy of the room by any person other than the woman who
now lay there.
Passing out, they shut the door firmly behind them and looked steadily
at the Indian girls, who had come into the corridor. Then McKay
addressed Rand, who had followed them.
"All right, Dave. Come along. This shut door is all the guard needed
here."
He judged rightly. As he and his companions turned down the hall, the
girls moved to the outer entrance. Covet the shining trinkets though
they might, they would not venture to open that portal beyond which
waited darkness and death.
From room to room the men worked their way, wrestling with doors which
stubbornly resisted, though none had a lock to hold it barred against
inspection. Each time, after shoving and prying the wooden barrier open,
they found that the difficulty was due to the sagging or warping of the
door, indicating long disuse. And each time when they penetrated beyond
it they found the room musty and dingy, its furnishings mouldy, and its
weapons--for there were old weapons in some of them--coated thick with
rust and spider webs. Bats veered out into the corridor or swirled
around the walls, and countless shells of long-dead beetles and other
insects crackled under foot. Everything told the same tale: here once
had lived a large family which now was gone.
Not all the rooms, however, were so hard of access or filled with decay.
A few showed signs of fairly recent tenancy, and one wide chamber
obviously formed the quarters of the daughters of Pachac. Except this
one, however, none gave indications that it was still being used for
sleeping purposes. The others seemed to be occasional guest rooms. The
eyes of the explorers narrowed as they surmised where the "guests" had
gone.
At length they found themselves in a lighted room undoubtedly used as
the kitchen. There, among other things, they found the gold bowl which
still held guayusa, now cooled, and a long shelf filled with tall
square-sided clay bottles, tightly corked with wooden plugs. One of
these had been taken from the shelf and stood beside the bowl. Lifting
and shaking it, Rand heard the telltale gurgle showing that some of its
contents had been poured out. Its plug came out easily--in fact, it
still was damp. He poured some of the liquid into one hand.
"Looks like tea," he said.
"Sleep tea, undoubtedly," Knowlton suggested.
"Yeah," agreed Tim. "That there's the knockout stuff that kills yer
brains, I bet. Gee, lookit the line-up of it on the shelf, will ye?
Looks like a jungle blind-tiger, with the square-face bottles and all.
She kept enough on hand to make a hundred idjuts a day, if it works
quick."
"Must work quick," McKay declared. "Pachac's people haven't been here
long. And look at them now."
"Wonder what became of the women and children," said Rand. "We've seen
only men."
"I'm wondering about quite a number of things," added Knowlton. "José
will straighten things up, perhaps. Come on, let's find him."
Passing through a smaller room, which seemed to have been recently used
for lounging and dining, they entered again the great main hall where
they had been entertained. It was empty of life. As they stepped into
the corridor, intending to leave the house and explore the yards, the
lean figure of José stalked in at the moonlit doorway. Behind him came
Pachac, and after them more of the brainless crew swung into sight.
"Ha, amigos! At last José is himself again--without a shirt or a knife,
it is true, but clean white from hair to heel. Por Dios, what a
difference water makes in a man! And all this crowd behind have become
men instead of pigs, though it took much scrubbing. Now the women have
been set free and take their turn at the bath. What have you found here?
You have searched, yes?"
"Nothing but rust and spider webs--and bottles of brain killer,"
Knowlton told him.
"That devil-broth--it shall be thrown over the walls! But come, let us
sit--and, por amor de Dios, give me a cigarette! I have had no smoke for
years."
They entered the big room, where, even as he snatched the proffered
tobacco and papers, he glanced about in search for Flora Almagro. Rand
pointed a thumb backward across the hall. José nodded.
"Years?" echoed McKay.
"Years, capitán. Time is measured by life, not by suns. A man may live
years in a week, or only a week in years. Is it not true? And I have
been in this place for years, though it is hardly two weeks since I
came. Ah-h-h!"
He gulped smoke into his lungs and exhaled rapturously.
Behind him the brown and the white men who had been slaves came sifting
into the room. As their leader said, they once more were men, clean from
scalp to sole, their skins glowing from the strenuous ablutions they had
given themselves; and somehow they seemed to stand the straighter now,
to look a little more alive, as if that bathing had refreshed brain as
well as body. Yet, though they no longer were driven beasts, one glance
at them showed that their minds still were fettered in a black bondage.
As they pressed in and spread out like an aimlessly flowing stream, the
five reunited partners watched them soberly. José sadly shook his head.
"My people," he said. "The people who followed me into this, as well as
those who came before me. And you too, señores, would have been spared
much if you had never joined José Martinez at the mouth of the Tigre
Yacu. I have a heavy task before me, friends--to clean the minds of
these men as I have cleaned their bodies. I hope it can be done, but
only my wife Huarma can do it."
"How?" puzzled Knowlton.
"She is wise in the ways of herbs and drugs. Though very young, she is
the medicine woman of her people. And what one evil leaf has done,
another good leaf may undo. We shall see."
"You mean to say that all these men were robbed of their brains by a
jungle herb?" demanded Rand.
"I do, Señor Dave. You have heard of the floripondio?"
Blank faces answered him.
"You have not. Be thankful that you have none of it within you now. If
you had, you soon would know more of it than words can tell.
"I am not a médico or a droguero--one skilled in drugs--but I know of
that devil-weed, for I have heard of it from men of the Napo country. Up
that Rio Napo--and in other places, too, no doubt--it is sometimes given
a man by his woman when she tires of him and wants another; and he
becomes an imbecile who will be the slave of that woman and of her new
love, not knowing what he does.
"It is steeped like a tea, that is all; made like the guayusa. But where
the guayusa drives weariness from the most tired man and makes him keen,
the floripondio deadens the brain of the strongest. Put into food or
drink, it soon does its deadly work without the man knowing what is
paralyzing his mind. Then he is lost.
"So, friends, that is the reason why the missing men of the Tigre have
not come back. That is the reason why you now see those who are before
you turned to animals. Only a little leaf of the jungle, plucked and put
into water--cooked by the same fire that warms innocent food--and then
used by human fiends to wreck the reason of men!"
CHAPTER XXVI
PHANTOM TREASURE
The missing men of the Tigre and their new comrades in misfortune, the
men of Pachac, stood for a time looking dully about them. Then, as if by
simultaneous tacit consent, they lay down on the floor and disposed
themselves for rest. Uncovered, unbedded, they relaxed and closed their
eyes like men long inured to nothing better. Only Pachac himself still
stood, pathetically dependent on the brain of his new son.
"Tired, yes," nodded José. "They have worked under the lash since
sunrise, they have fought hard to-night. So have I. But my mind is not
burdened like theirs, and it will not yet allow me to rest. Let us sit,
comrades, and----"
A fresh padding of feet in the corridor interrupted him. In at the door
flocked women and children, led by the daughters of the chief; the
weaker portion of the white Indian tribe. Scanning them, the five
partners saw at once that the curse of the floripondio had not been put
on their minds. Their eyes darted eagerly about in search for husbands,
brothers, fathers. Having found their men, they ran to them; then sank
silently down at their sides without disturbing their rest.
The outlaw's sober face lightened.
"That will help much," he declared. "With the women to follow the orders
of Huarma and care for their men, much may be done. I have not seen them
since the accursed drug was put on us, and I feared that they, too, were
darkened in mind."
He spoke to the tallest of his brides--the one who, he had said, was
Huarma the medicine woman. With dignity worthy of her father, yet with
due deference to her hawk-faced lord, she responded. He nodded again.
"The women and children," he explained, "have been used as slaves on the
plantation, which lies back among the trees to the west. The woman
Almagro thought it not worth her trouble to drug them--she knew they
dared not try to escape without their men. Is it not true, señores, that
human fiends always are tripped at last by something they have left
undone? If that woman had not held in contempt the women of Pachac, and
in particular the daughters of Pachac, we should not now be here, nor
would she be lying dead across the corridor. But now that we all are
together once more, let us speak of what has been and what may be."
He dropped his cigarette stub, eyed the table, and, with a grin, strode
to it. Shoving the big upturned bowl to the middle of the board, he
swung himself up and squatted on its broad yellow base. Then he beckoned
with both hands to his wives and their sisters and father. Laughingly
they approached and ranged themselves along the table edge, placing
their parent in the middle. The Americans smiled as they contemplated
the scene.
"Begorry, Hozy, ol'-timer," grinned Tim, "ye look like a baboon
king--naw, that ain't the word----"
"Barbarian," chuckled Rand.
"Yeah. Jest what a barbarian king is I dunno, but Hozy's one."
The metaphor was not bad. Seated on a golden throne, with his foster
father at his feet staring owlishly outward; with his comely women lined
at his sides and his people prostrate before him; with the royal purple
lining the walls of the spacious hall, the bare-flamed gold lamps
glowing, and the jungle moon slanting its white beams in at the narrow
openings behind--José Martinez, man without a country, naked and
fiercely bearded, looked to be the truculent ruler of some forgotten
kingdom resurrected from prehistoric time. And here in this untamed
land, where the rise and fall of nations and the passage of centuries
meant nothing at all, he truly was a king; for in his sinewy hand rested
whatever power existed.
Now his gaunt face cracked wide, and he seized an empty gold cup and
held it aloft in a grotesquely dramatic gesture.
"Dios guarde al rey!" he cackled. "God save the king! But of what good
is it to be king when one cannot drink his own health? To-morrow, my
ambassadors from North America, we must search our royal cellar for wine
not doctored. Then our treasure shall be doubled, for if we drink enough
we can see two bars of gold where only one was. Hah!"
"What's that? Bars of gold? Where?" demanded McKay.
"Where? Where but here, capitán? Why do you think all these men have
been held slaves, robbed of brains, driven with whips? For what, but to
work in the mine?"
"Great guns! You mean that? What mine?"
"The mine of gold in the mountain to the rear. Sí! Gold! The gold of mad
Rafael Pardo! Hah! You are astonished, yes? You believed, as I did, the
wail of the woman that the mine was destroyed? She sang you that same
song, and you have not had time to think why these men were----"
He stopped short and sprang up, suddenly pale. The others, too, except
the sleeping men, lost color and staggered. The solid floor had quivered
under them.
From the cordon of mountains outside sounded a low rumbling growl. Again
the floor shuddered slightly. Then all was still.
"Once more the temblor!" breathed José, his eyes darting about the
walls. "Once more the ground shivers. But it is past--until it comes
again. And these solid old walls have stood worse shocks, no doubt. Let
us forget it."
Yet the gleam was gone from his eyes and the ring from his voice as he
went on, and the sudden fire that had swept the veins of the Americans
at the magic words "gold mine" had as swiftly cooled. Each felt the hand
of an awful power hovering over the house, able, at its brute whim, to
crush it and its occupants into jumbled stones and mangled corpses.
"Gold is here, amigos," said José. "And it is ours. But let us start at
the beginning. First tell me how you came here, and what happened before
and after."
He sat again on his yellow throne, and the four disposed themselves as
comfortably as might be on the long couch. To stand would not help them
if another quake came.
Briefly Knowlton detailed the happenings since José had turned his back
on them at the lake of the burning sands. As the minutes passed and no
further sound come from the mountains, all forgot the recent ground
tremble. And when the tale was done the Peruvian's face again was alight
with interest.
"So that was the heavy blow we earth rats felt this afternoon--the
falling of the trail along the cliff. We felt the temblor, too, down
there in our hole--sí, it sickened us!--but what the blow meant we did
not know. Nor did I know, until this moment, of that shelf along the
rock. We came in by another way."
"Then there's a way out?"
"There is one--there may be others. We shall see. But when the rains
fall hard, as they soon will, that way will be closed by water. We came
in here, señores, through the ground!
"Sí, es verdad; it is true. My father Pachac knew that way, and told me
of no other. We came as he directed. We left the path at a watery
ravine, going up in the water and killing our trail. And after wading
far we followed Pachac, who went over the hills to more water, and so
here.
"If you looked about you to-day, you must have seen that this place is a
gulf among mountains. And if it had no outlet, when the rains came they
would fill it up, and it would be a lake. Yet it is dry and firm--why?
Because at one place near its middle there is a hole, and that hole runs
away under the earth to the other side of a mountain to the south, and
through it all the rain streams run out. It has not much water now, and
we came in along its bed without much trouble--though it was a long,
black journey, and I had to club snakes to death as I advanced."
Thus the mystery of the vanishing trail of Pachac and his people was
explained. The Americans made no comment. José went on.
"Now this is the tale of this place, and of the family of Almagro, as my
Padre Pachac knows it:
"Long ago, before Pachac was born, and while his father's father was a
very young warrior, there came from somewhere to the north a band of
hard-fighting men who seemed all of the same family. They came as if
seeking a place where they would not be found by some one or something
they had left behind them--not fleeing, but always watching toward the
rear. And they brought, besides themselves, their women and slaves:
white women and Indian workers; the women dressed and armed like men,
and the Indians carrying burdens.
"They found this gulf among the mountains, which then was much easier to
enter than now, for into it led a narrow twisting cañon. And they had no
more than come into it when they spied gold--a yellow splash of it on
bare rock, plain to any eye. So here they stayed.
"Not long after they came, another band, much bigger, without women,
also came from the north as if hunting them. But the heavy rains were
now beginning, and the waters rushing from every side not only swept
away all trace of the Almagro trail but discouraged and drove away the
pursuers. They never returned.
"The Almagro family made their Indians work on the walls and on the
gold. They were hard masters, and the Indians died out. Then the white
men went out into the jungle round about, and with their guns they
killed chiefs and made slaves of their people. These, too, they worked
to death in their mine--men and women and children, all were driven like
cattle until they died.
"This went on for years, and much gold was taken out, but the family
stayed on. The older Almagros died, and the younger ones also grew old
and died; but the gold still was there. Earthquakes came and closed up
the entrance cañon and wrecked the mine; but they opened up their gold
hole again and kept burrowing. Yet, the more gold they got, the slower
the work went and the weaker they grew.
"Two things made this so: they could not get enough Indians now, because
the Indians either moved too far away or were too strong for them; and
they would not mate with Indians and keep their family big. They mated
among themselves, brother with sister, and most of the children died
young or were dull of brain. Some were killed by Indians, some by
earthquakes, some by snakes or other jungle things. The family grew very
small: too small to be able to leave the place. They knew the Jiveros
would get them.
"Then, from trying to enslave Indians by force, they began buying
prisoners from those Indians. With the Jiveros they could do nothing,
but with other Indians they arranged trades. Whatever prisoners they
could buy they took, paying with gold, which the Indians could trade out
by crossing to the Curaray and then journeying down to the Napo.
"Pachac, and his father before him, knew of this trade in prisoners, but
had nothing to do with it. They were wanderers, lived too far down the
Tigre to make the trade profitable, did not want white men's goods, and
would rather kill their enemies than sell them. But when Pachac's
half-Spanish son grew up he had different ideas. He wanted white men's
guns and cartridges, and Pachac let him keep prisoners and send them
here. So that, amigos, was what was meant when we were told we should go
to the wheel."
"What is the wheel?" queried Rand.
"It is a thing made to crush ore, and a man killer. In some ways it is
like the trapiche sugar mill used in the Andes, which is worked by
cattle going around and around. Here, men are the cattle. Many a poor
slave must have worn out his life on the infernal thing."
"What's that big bell outside for?" Knowlton asked.
"What it was used for at first, or where it came from, I cannot tell
you. I know only the tale as it is told me by Pachac. But now it has
been used to call in the men from the mine. I suppose that if an Indian
attack should come it would be rung at any time, but since I have been
here it has rung only at night, after a day without end--a day of
horrible toil.
"We were herded in a foul pen behind here, with stout gates which no man
could pass. The pen opens into a walled passage leading into the mine. A
rotten breakfast at daybreak--a day of torture under the whips of those
unfeeling Zaparo brutes we killed to-night--another rotten meal after
dark--a night sleeping on the filthy stones of our pen--then back to
more labor. That is the life here.
"Men who have tried to escape were maimed so that they were not likely
to travel far again--their toes cut off. Some of them now lie here in
this room. One--Rafael Pardo--reached Iquitos, as you know. And you say
another was killed by green men above? So some did try again--perhaps
the floripondio was weak at times and men grew cunning and desperate for
a while.
"But I think that accursed drug was put into the food at certain times
to keep the men always dull of brain. I think, too, that the use of it
was an idea of the woman Flora and not of her fathers--though I do not
know that to be so. But Huarma, my wife, saw that woman of evil putting
it into food after we men had been sent to the pen, so I know it was
given us at times."
"How come ye to dodge it?" Tim wondered.
"I did not dodge it, Señor Tim. The woman betrayed us all. We knew
nothing of her devil brew, and when she received us in friendly manner
and gave us food and drink we took it gladly--and awoke in the morning
unable to think and covered by the guns of those slave drivers--guns
taken from men who had won through to this place before us and then had
been made idiots.
"But Huarma, chosen as one of the house slaves, spied and learned what
the thing was that had made us beasts. Then she told women sent to the
plantation to find for her a certain herb--I do not know what--it is one
of the medicine secrets of her people. This she brought to me at night,
with clean food and drink, though she would have died if the guards had
caught her. Night after night she came, and my mind grew keen, and our
father's dullness, too, was partly cleared away--she had not enough
medicine for us both, and she gave me the best of it. But she warned me
to keep playing fool until her chance should come to open our gate and
let me lead an attack. To-night that chance came."
"A reg'lar he-woman, I'll tell the world!" admired Tim. "But where's all
this gold ye brag about?"
José arose, stretching his long arms wide, a triumphant grin lighting
his face.
"Come and see, comrades--partners! It is put every noon into a
vault--the pure gold which has been melted into bars. The guards alone
handle it, but I know where it goes: in at a door in the wall near the
mine entrance. There must be a huge room there in the side of the
mountain, piled with the gold of four lifetimes. Come!"
They came. Out into the moonlight, down a yard where the stones still
glistened redly and bodies lay piled beside the wall, they followed him.
On into a patio where shone a deep pool of water--evidently the bathing
place of the Almagros--and through a ruined gate like that of a prison
yard; across a walled space whose fetid odor told that it was the slave
pen, they strode. There, after hauling open another solid gate, they
entered a long runway terminating in a black tunnel. At the tunnel mouth
their guide paused.
At his right showed a stout door, set in the wall and heavily barred.
"Hah!" he exulted. "Here lies the treasure of the Almagros! After all
their crime and cruelty it goes to a slave, and to his comrades who
to-morrow might also have been slaves. If you would use your gold, you
Almagros, reach out now from the fires where you roast, and snatch it to
buy a drop of water from your master, the devil! We come to take it from
you. Ho, ho, ho!"
He tugged at a bar, which slid with an ease telling of constant use.
Eager hands forced the other bars away. The door swung open.
Holding aloft the lamps they had brought, the four stepped in and
stared about. For a moment they stood speechless.
"Cristo!" José spat then. "What demon's work is this?"
They saw a stone-walled, stone-roofed, stone-floored cell not more than
twenty feet square. They saw nothing else.
The vault was empty.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE HEAD-HUNTERS
Days passed.
Days of work, they were; days of striving to restore the drug-deadened
minds of the former slaves to their one-time vigor; days of search for
the vanished treasure of the Almagros, of exploration and critical
examination of the mine. And each was followed by an evening of
discouraged discussion.
Far more success was achieved with minds than with mines. Under the
skillful treatment of Huarma the men of Pachac steadily shed the incubus
of brain blight, awaking each morning with clearer eyes and quicker
wits. Pachac himself, whose curative treatment at the hands of his
daughter had begun while he still was a fellow-slave of José, now was
wholly himself again, though gloomy in spirit because he had lost his
most cherished possession--the gruesome girdle woven from the hair of
his slain enemies. At some time during his term of bondage it had been
cut off him by a brutal guard who found that it served as a protection
against whip blows, and now it could not be found despite the most
persistent search.
But the survivors of the Tigre's missing men, who had been here long
before the coming of José and his tribe, showed little response to the
ministrations of the youthful medicine woman. Their brains had been
permeated for months, or years, by the terrible floripondio; and it was
useless to expect a speedy revival of their mental faculties. True, they
seemed a trifle less brutish, and in time they might regain full control
of themselves. But for the present they gave little indication that they
would ever again be the men they had been. In view of the fact that
most, if not all, of the white men among them had been dangerous
criminals before ever they came up the Tigre Yacu, perhaps it was as
well for the others that their power to plan and execute violence now
was more or less atrophied.
They were kept at work, those witless creatures, both for their own good
and for the benefit of the community; but not at their former tasks in
the mine. First they and the reviving warriors of Pachac were divided
into squads which dug graves on the hillsides beyond the walls; and
there Flora Almagro and the men of both sides who had fallen on that red
night of revolt were buried deep. Then they were turned to cleaning up
the house and its yard, making the mouldy old rooms again habitable and
the former slave pen fit to traverse. After that the Pachac men were set
by their chief at making new weapons, while the others were drawn off to
work with the women on the plantation--light labor which gave them the
fresh air and clean sunlight of which they had been so long robbed in
the gloomy mine holes.
For the present, the mine was deserted by all except the restless five
adventurers, who, after a thorough inspection, also left it and returned
to their first search--for the Almagro wealth. Their examination showed
that the mine was practically worked out. Some gold yet remained, but
what was in sight made the inspectors shake their heads; and the place
was so honeycombed with shafts and tunnels as to show that the mountain
not only was virtually looted of its treasure but absolutely unsafe to
work in. An unusually sharp earth shock would probably cause it to
crumple on itself, crushing the mine into nothing. And, in the past few
days, several more slight quakes already had occurred.
Yet the pinching vein of yellow in the mine was all the gold they found.
Hunt high, hunt low, not one bar out of the tons which must have come
from it could be discovered.
They ransacked house, yards, and even the mine itself for some trace.
They pounded walls and floors, listening for hollow sounds. They swam
about in the bathing pool, hunting under water. In only one place did
they find sign that gold had ever lain. That was on the stone floor of
the vault where, José swore, he had seen bars taken in at noon.
That floor bore out his assertion. Between its stones were many grains
of the metal, evidently chipped from the bars by rough edges and corners
of the rock. But where it had gone, and how, no man could tell, though
all sorts of wild guesses were made.
"By cripes, them dead ones done jest what ye dared 'em to, Hozy," Tim
said sourly one day. "They hopped up offen their gridirons and yanked
the whole layout down to their winter quarters. Mebbe it's melted by now
and they're swimmin' in it."
José grinned, but with little enjoyment.
"I wish we had saved one of those slave drivers as a prisoner that
night," he regretted. "He could be made to tell things, perhaps. But
then there was neither time nor reason to think of anything but killing.
And now--dead men tell no tales."
They were standing at the tunnel mouth as they talked, the hot afternoon
sun glaring down on one side, the dark empty mine yawning at them on the
other. Along the walled passage leading from mine to pen no other figure
moved. Somewhere up in the yards Pachac and his men were lazily working
away at the manufacture of their new weapons. Out on the plantation,
well away from the walls, the women and their male assistants were
toiling as they pleased. Within the house the chief's daughters were
busy at various occupations. For several days even the distant menace of
the Jivero signal drums had been stilled. All was peace. Yet, from
force of habit, each of the partners was carrying his gun.
"Well," said Knowlton, as they turned toward the house, "it doesn't get
us anything to keep coming back and mooning around this vault like a
bunch of kids who have lost their baseball. The stuff's gone somewhere,
and we've looked everywhere. The only thing left is to take this whole
place apart stone by stone, and that would use up a few years of time.
Guess we'd do better to scout around these hills and locate a new mine."
"The pot of gold was at the end of the rainbow, but somebody's moved the
pot," nodded Rand. "Or maybe the rainbow's moved. Either way, it's up to
us to move also, unless something develops soon."
He glanced around at the mountain tops looming beyond the wall. José
followed his look.
"I doubt, Señor Dave, if you will find gold anywhere else in this
valley," he said. "Remember, the Almagros were here many years. If more
gold were here they would have smelled it out long ago."
"Sure. But there's a whole cordillera along here for us to browse in.
Say, do you keep feeling as if these mountains were watching
you--hostile--ready to jump on your back?"
"Always," the outlaw admitted. "Perhaps those Almagros felt it, too, and
built these walls more to make them feel safe than to shut out the
savages."
"Made 'em thick enough, anyways," said Tim. "Ye could run a tunnel right
through 'em from end to end, and nobody'd know 'twas there."
McKay stopped short. His eyes ranged along one of the walls--the one in
which the door of that empty vault was set.
"By George!" he exclaimed. "Tim, I'll bet you've hit it. Secret passage
in the wall from that vault to--some place under ground, maybe. We'll
rip a hole in this wall and find out. What say, José?"
"Por Dios! Capitán, it may be----But no. We have tested the stones in
that vault and found no entrance. Of what use would be a tunnel ending
in a solid wall?"
"True. But there's something, somewhere, that we haven't found. I want a
breach made in this wall, just to----"
"Hark!" Rand cut in.
Across the gulf, thin and high, echoed a scream.
It was the cry of a fear-stricken woman. It came from the direction of
the plantation. It swelled from one isolated note of fright to the
voices of other women breaking out in mortal terror.
"Demonio!" José cried sharply. "The women of Pachac do not scream unless
the devil himself is after them!"
He darted away toward the yards. The others dashed after him.
As they ran, they heard the outcries coming nearer. Then the screams
died down, the women needing all their breath for running. But from the
yards where Pachac and his men lounged now rose a new uproar--a harsh
outbreak of surprise and rage. Then, high over all, sounded another
appalling note from the plantation.
It was the awful death yell of a man.
Through the old slave pen, through the patio with its quiet pool, and
into the long yard beside the house ran José and his comrades. That yard
now was empty; for Pachac and his warriors had plunged through the big
open gateway, and their yells of wrathful defiance roared outside the
walls. José tore on around the corner to join them, his swarthy face
contracted into a fighting mask. But the Americans, with McKay in the
lead, lunged straight at the wall.
There rose a crude ladder, lashed to the rough scaffolding which they
had noticed on their first arrival: one of several short stair flights
by which defenders could man the walls in haste. Up this swarmed the
captain and the following three. Hardly had McKay jumped into position
against the upper stones when his rifle began to crack. In rapid
succession the other guns added their wicked voices in a chorus of
death.
Streaming toward them, close at hand now, they saw the panting women,
throwing themselves up the hill toward safety. Close behind, their
paint-streaked faces grinning in mingled ferocity and triumph, bounded
warriors of the Jiveros.
The dreaded drums at the west, which a few days ago had muttered back
and forth, had not been merely grumbling among themselves over the
killing of an ambushed band by the men of Pachac back on the Tigre. The
ensuing silence had not meant peace. Now the vengeful killers from the
Pastassa were here to gain heads and women, and to destroy this
stronghold which for generations had repulsed their fathers.
And the big gate was open, nearly all the defenders outside, and their
women prizes almost within reach of their clutching hands.
But the hands of those foremost pursuers closed, not on the flying hair
or bare shoulders of their prey, but in death-clawings at the ground.
From their elevated platform the four gunmen stabbed flame and death
downward. From the gate the roar of José's repeater broke out. From the
disordered ranks of the men of Pachac a ragged flight of arrows whirred.
The sudden storm of lead and of five-foot shafts struck the nearest
Jiveros to earth. Warriors collapsed, pitched headlong, kicked, rolled,
were still. Others, disconcerted by the abrupt belch of death from walls
which a moment ago had been empty, slowed to fit arrows to their bows.
But behind them a thick stream of other savages came pouring across the
bowl and up the slope. The rush was checked for only an instant.
"Holy Saint Pat!" gasped Tim between shots. "There's a reg'lar army o'
the hellions!"
The women reached the gate and reeled within, eyes glazed with terror
and lungs gasping for breath. The Americans clattered their breech bolts
without raising fresh cartridges. Their magazines were shot out--and the
extra ammunition was inside the house.
"José!" roared McKay. "Inside, quick! Inside!"
Another defiant blast from the outlaw's gun drowned the command. An
ululation of rage from the men of Pachac followed. Outnumbered though
they were, they were seeing red and thirsting to close with their
hereditary foes.
"God!" gritted McKay. "It'll be a massacre! Hold 'em, men! Hold 'em with
your side-arms!"
He dropped his rifle, leaped down into the yard, sprinted for the gate.
The three remaining on the wall unholstered their forty-fives and again
opened on the enemy. The ripping roar of the big pistols, the impact of
the heavy bullets among them, again slowed the Jiveros in the van, but
did not stop them--except those hit, who were stopped forever. The
others, though they flinched and batted their eyes at each recurrent
crash, loosed a retaliating storm of arrows. And they came on.
The deadly shafts splintered against the walls, hurtled overhead, hissed
between the pistol fighters. Too, they plunged into the unbulwarked
white Indians. Several of Pachac's men dropped, writhing.
Out on their rear now raced McKay with pistol drawn. In three bounds he
was beside José and Pachac. His gun and his voice broke out
together--the weapon hurling lead at the oncoming savages, the commands
striking José like blows.
"Inside!" _Bang!_ "Jump----" _Bang!_ "----you----" _Bang!_ "----damned
idiot!" _Bang-bang!_ "No brains!" _Bang-bang!_ "Inside, fool!"
José jumped. For once he had forgotten that, as fight commander of this
gang, he must govern them--he had reverted to the lone fierce jungle
rover fighting against odds, thinking only of killing as long as he
could. McKay's voice brought him to his senses. He lunged at his men,
cursing, shoving, hitting, propelling them in through the wall.
The Indians themselves were sobered a little by the fall of their
kinsmen under the Jivero arrows. Under the crackling orders of José and
the weight of his fist and foot they gave way, turned, and sprang for
cover. But they took all their dead with them, and their wounded, too,
though the stricken men still living would not live long with the poison
of those arrows in their veins. No Jivero should take a head from them
until the whole tribe of Pachac was down.
Last of all, McKay and José backed in, dodging javelins thrown by
Jiveros leaping toward them. As the massive gate was heaved shut the
firing ended. The pistols of the three above were empty.
An instant later the Jiveros struck the gate and the walls.
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE MOUNTAINS SPEAK
Later on, the survivors of this battle were to learn that only a
wandering woman, seeking herbs in the forest beyond the plantation, had
prevented a complete surprise of the Almagro fortress and a wholesale
massacre of its men.
She had spied the first of the Jiveros slipping along through the
jungle, creeping toward the house. Screaming, she had fled with the
speed of mortal fear, first to the plantation and then toward the
protecting walls, her sisters dashing after her. Thanks to their
frenzied swiftness and the devastating gunfire, they all reached cover.
But the dull-brained men working with them on the plantation died.
Whether they failed to grasp their peril and stood blankly gaping until
the Jiveros were upon them, whether a sudden flare of manhood prompted
them to leap at the savages and attempt to protect the retreat of the
women, will never be known. But none of them lived to move far from the
spot where he was standing when the alarm broke out.
Now Knowlton and Rand and Tim, standing a few seconds longer at the wall
after emptying their pistols, glanced around at a horde of rushing
savages grimacing at them in fury, howling a jungle hymn of hate,
brandishing aloft the ghastly trophies chopped from those missing men of
the Tigre who would never go out again. The sight of those severed heads
and of the vindictive triumph in the faces of the wild men exhibiting
them both sickened and infuriated the whites. They threw their pistols
into aim once more, then remembered their uselessness.
"Got to git more shells!" rasped Tim. "And then, ye bloody
butchers--then!"
He stooped and seized McKay's abandoned rifle preparatory to sliding
down the ladder. As he did so an arrow impaled his hat and knocked it
into the yard, the shaft hurtling on and slithering up and over the
house roof. Others whizzed around Rand and Knowlton, who ducked and
dropped to the yard below. A gloating yell swelled from outside, the
bowmen believing the quick disappearance due to hits.
The three sprinted for the door, Tim passing McKay's gun to him on the
run as they plunged inside. The captain clutched it automatically, his
whole mind busy with the urgent problem of bringing order out of chaos,
whipping the disordered rabble into an efficient fighting force. And a
problem it was; for these men, little less wild than the ravening
Jiveros outside, knew only one style of fighting--the slipping, dodging
combat of the thick bush, the jungle animal method of grappling with a
foe and dispatching him--and now that they found themselves cooped
within white men's walls they hardly knew how to make use of themselves.
Those few who had been trained in rifle work by the dead Spanish-Indian
son of Pachac were useless now as gunmen, for, though the guns of the
conquered slave drivers were at hand, there were hardly any cartridges
of that caliber--José himself had only a handful left for his own rifle.
The others, though equipped with their new arrows and spears and clubs,
had no poison with which to smear the points of the missiles and no
chance to use the bludgeons. All were in a fever to meet their foes
instanter, but none acted in cohesion with the rest.
Some shot arrows or hurled spears upward at random, hoping to hit
enemies outside by pure luck. Others scrambled to the fighting runway
overhead, stood still while they loosed at the Jiveros, and were swept
down to death by counterflights of venomed shafts. A few even sought to
reopen the big gate and jump out with spear or club. The whole yard was
a furore of blundering action.
José himself, though struggling furiously to get his men in hand, hardly
knew what he wanted to do with them. He, too, was a jungle fighter, not
a soldier. And McKay, who saw that these raging warriors would never
consent to herd themselves inside the house and do their battling
through narrow slits, could not impress on their hot minds the only
other expedient--to carry on a running skirmish along the walls. Nor
could he get José, assailing his own men with fist and foot and lurid
language, to listen to his roaring counsel. And Pachac, his teeth
gritting in impotent craving to bludgeon some Jivero with a huge club
gripped in his knotty fists, was neither able nor willing to understand
the white man.
The reappearance of his own comrades, their pockets and shirt fronts
crammed with the reserve ammunition, was a godsend to the captain.
Mechanically accepting a hatful of mingled rifle and pistol cartridges
shoved at him by Knowlton, he yelled:
"Up on the walls! Merry, left wall--Dave right--Tim front! Shoot, duck,
run, shoot! Up and at 'em!"
The three jumped for their respective walls. But each halted and threw
up his reloaded rifle. Atop the stonework, hands and heads were
appearing--heads of warriors who had scaled up on the shoulders of
others and now were heaving themselves inward like old-time pirates
clambering over the bulwarks of a fighting prize.
For a few seconds the yard roared with the rattle of gunfire. The heads
flopped backward and were gone. The Americans reloaded and again ran for
their stations.
By the time they had scaled the ladders more heads were rising across
the stones. Each swiftly shot his own sector clear, then ducked to
evade a hail of missiles hurled by Jiveros farther out. They crawled a
yard or two, then popped up and slammed a few bullets into the enemy
before sinking and moving on a little farther.
The renewed rip of the guns and the up-and-down-and-over tactics of the
gunmen had drawn the eyes of every white Indian. Now, with their example
plain before all, McKay hammered home his plan of battle.
"José!" he bellowed, his voice booming through the ferine chorus from
outside. "Divide forces! Man the walls! Make your men keep moving! Like
that!"
His rifle swept around, indicating the dodging three who were shooting
down the enemy while keeping themselves protected.
"Keep them moving!" he repeated. "Or they'll be killed like those!" And
he pointed to the corpses of Indians who had stood still long enough to
become targets.
This time José listened, saw, understood. At once he began driving the
idea into the head of Pachac. That veteran, after viewing again the way
the three riflemen were working, put the plan into effect at once.
The warriors, whom neither José nor McKay had been able to handle,
caught the idea quickly when their chief howled it at them, and sprang
with alacrity to the sides pointed out. This moving, sliding method of
warfare was not, after all, much different from bush fighting, except
that it was carried on along a narrow wall path, above ground and behind
a stone barrier. From every angle it was the best mode of defense under
the conditions: it not only gave the men on the wall the maximum
protection coupled with ability to see their enemies and shoot straight,
but it kept them ranging all along instead of holding only small
sections. True, their bows were clumsy weapons to handle in such narrow
quarters, and the rear of the place was virtually unprotected, due to
lack of men. But such strength as the defenders had was now put where it
could be used with most deadly effect.
Scrambling along the runway, rising to heave spears and dart arrows out
and down, dropping and moving on, civilized and savage allies carried on
their jack-in-the-box warfare. Few heads now rose on the other side, for
most of the Jiveros had drawn back to get a straighter aim at their
quarry; and those who did attempt scaling were quickly shot down by the
ready guns. Some of the assailants took cover around the big butts of
near-by trees, but the main body scorned defense, moving about in the
open and snapping spear or arrow at the appearing and disappearing heads
within the walls. And into their mass poured a galling fire which
carpeted the hillside with dead.
Yet McKay, though he now had marshaled his forces into the only feasible
formation, felt in his bones that this was a losing fight. Rapidly he
ran along all three walls, ascending ladders, glancing about, crashing a
bullet or two into savages, then descending and dashing to another
section; and he saw that, as Tim had said, there was a "reg'lar army o'
the hellions," far out-numbering his own weirdly assorted garrison in
both men and missiles.
It could not be long before the cartridges and arrows and javelins of
his men would run out. Then only five machetes, a few empty rifles, and
a meager supply of clubs would remain with which to assail the savages
who would come crawling over the walls on all sides. To fight
hand-to-hand in the yard against an over-powering force meant inevitable
death. To withdraw into the house meant slower death; for the vengeful
Jiveros, if unable eventually to batter a way in, would camp outside and
besiege them until starvation claimed all immured within.
José, too, saw this. He, like McKay, was running from place to place,
keeping his men moving up and down, preventing a bunching of forces at
any one spot, scaling the ladders now and then to look out and spit
bullets and curses at the beleaguering head-hunters. The two met before
the big house door, in which the women and children were packed,
watching.
"Por Dios, capitán!" grinned the outlaw. "For once I think José is
caught in a trap which he cannot break free from! But the Jivero who
cuts my throat shall cross a heap of his comrades to get me!"
"Looks bad," admitted McKay, mopping his dripping face. As he spoke, two
of the white Indians toppled from the runway, quivered on the stones,
and lay still. "Too many for us. We'll have to get inside before long."
"Sí. Our arrows fail, and----Hah! Down, you fiend!" His rifle jumped,
and a head rising beyond the right front wall was gone.
"----and we go in and starve," he went on, pumping his lever. "I would
rather stay out and fight to the end, but the women----Ho! Santa Maria!
We have no women--we all are fighting men! Look!"
For the first time both noticed that those waiting women and children
were armed, and that the faces which recently had been distorted with
terror now were set in desperate resolution. The ancient weapons of the
Almagros, the useless guns of the dead guards, the knives of the
kitchen, all had been gathered up and were clutched in the hands of the
women and boys of the Pachac tribe.
"That is the answer--death now in the open, not death like starving
rats!" vowed José, his eyes snapping. "To the walls, all of us! Let
us----"
He staggered. So did McKay. The ground was quivering again.
For a moment the fighting died. Defenders and assailants alike felt that
tremor, heard a muffled growl in the mountains looming around. Savage
and civilized men felt an unnerving sinking at the stomach, a chill
along the spine. And the women and children, though stoically resolved
to meet death fighting to the end against their encompassing human foes,
cried out and sprang from the doorway as the floor crept beneath their
feet.
The ground became motionless and the growling ceased. For a few seconds
the tense silence held. Then a rifle shot cracked, and Tim's gruff voice
exulted: "Yah! Ye dirty butcher, how d'ye like that?"
A new yell of fury outside answered. Again arrows thudded against the
house roof. A howl of defiance broke from the men of Pachac. The
hopeless battle was on again.
"That settles it!" granted McKay. "If we get a bad shock the house may
go. Get them out in the open!"
They were all outside already, and they stayed out. McKay and José
parted. The captain loped to a section at the left front where several
of the white Indians had been shot down, and where the other defenders
were out of arrows. He clambered up just in time to blow away two fierce
faces which topped the wall. To his dismay, he found no Jiveros now in
sight. They had rushed in and were close to the stones, working upward
in force. He grimly held his fire, awaiting the rising of the next
heads.
José, working along the left wall, found the same condition. Knowlton,
whose hot gun was the only firearm on that section, was doggedly firing
as his chance came; but the Indians on his runway now were looking
desperately around for clubs, loose stones, anything with which to
continue their fight. Their bows were becoming useless, both because
they had nothing to shoot and little to shoot at--for here, too, the
Jiveros had closed in. Even as José looked along the weakening line he
saw Knowlton hand his rifle to the nearest Indian for use as a club,
draw his pistol, and loosen his machete. He clamped his jaws and jammed
his four remaining cartridges into his own gun. Close work was at hand.
Tim and Rand, with their Indian fighting mates, were in similar straits.
Tim had already shot his rifle out and now was working along with his
pistol, drilling the upshooting heads. Rand was even worse off--his
automatic had jammed, and pounding on the wall failed to loosen its
action. And here, as on the other sides, the head-shrinkers were
climbing in ever-increasing numbers.
Yet no man of the garrison left his wall. No man even thought of it.
McKay, with his rifle, and Tim and Knowlton with their hand guns, were
shooting faster and faster. José sprang on the top of the stones and
chopped with red machete. Indians who had clubs followed his example,
crushing skulls with hoarse grunts of satisfaction. Indians who had none
yelled to the women below to pass up their weapons.
Instead of complying, the women themselves climbed the ladders and, with
knife and ax and ancient muzzle loader, attacked the slayers and slavers
crawling up and over at them.
Huarma and her sisters, the daughters of Pachac, rose beside José and,
screaming hate into the ears of the encroaching Jiveros, swung the
clubbed guns of the late guards down on head after head. The other women
of Pachac, with whatever weapons they had gleaned from the house, hacked
and clubbed and stabbed. The men of Pachac grappled barehanded with
antagonists who snaked themselves up to a footing. From somewhere roared
the voice of Pachac himself, howling in ferocious joy as he smashed the
skulls of his enemies. And the Americans, though a few cartridges still
were left, sheathed their pistols and joined the hand-to-hand conflict
with slashing steel. All along the top of the wall the last furious
death grapple was in full swing.
"Hah!" shrilled the voice of José. "A fight of fights! Kill! Men of
Pachac--women of Pachac--kill! Fight to the end! Kill!"
Suddenly a flare of orange flame shot high in the northwestern sky. A
roaring inferno of noise burst among the mountains. The ground heaved
like a rolling sea.
A grinding, cracking crash of collapsing stones and timbers echoed from
the house of the Almagros. A deep stroke boomed from the big bell in the
yard, terminating in a thumping jangle as it fell.
The walls, with their battling antagonists still heaving and clubbing
and grappling, pitched outward in a harsh rumble of sliding stone. A
long scream rang across the gulf. Then fell an awful silence.
CHAPTER XXIX
OUT OF THE WALL
Rain hissed down.
Cold, heavy, thick and fast it deluged a jumble of stones and timbers
which had been a house; sluiced along between lines of other stones
which had been walls; washed red stains from contorted men sprawling
motionless on the sides of a knoll; beat back the senses of other men
who groaned, stirred, sat up, stared dizzily around. Then it slid away
down the hillsides, collected in new-born streams, snaked along
depressions, and, at the bottom of the gulf, crept upward again in a
shallow but steadily rising pool.
In the memories of the first men to regain consciousness echoed receding
yells of fear and the slap of bare feet fleeing into the jungle. Now
from the wrecked walls a new sound crept into the swish and splash of
the rain--moans of crushed and mangled fighters not yet dead but dying.
Into the horrid chorus broke other noises--cries of men, women,
children, revived by the wet chill and staggering up from the ground to
learn the fate of those whom they held most dear.
Through the blurring sheets of falling water lurched indistinct figures
holding arms before their faces to fend the drowning deluge from mouths
and nostrils, peering about for relatives or friends, calling with
voices growing sharper as those whom they sought remained silent. Then
over all bellowed a fog-horn voice erupting from a tattered figure in
dripping khaki, from whose red beard drizzled a stream of rain turned
pink by a bleeding nose.
"Cap! Looey! Dave! Hozy! Where are ye?"
For a time none of the voices for which he listened made any response.
Other voices in plenty arose; some in joy of reunion, some in repeated
shouts of certain names, some in dull groans of pain. Other forms came
blundering into his path, but all were those of Indians who peered at
him and then stepped away on their own quests. Again and again he roared
through the unceasing tumult of the downpour. Then he jumped ahead,
drawing his machete.
A tumbling thing on the ground a little farther on became two things.
One of them pitched to its feet and glowered down from its six-foot
height at a naked huddle of flesh which twitched a few times and became
quiet. As Tim pounded up it turned sharply, and the bloody-nosed veteran
looked into the swollen face and blazing eyes of McKay. Under him lay a
powerful Jivero with head twisted aside.
"Huh! Don't ye know this here war's gone bust, cap?" demanded the red
man, slapping his commander joyously on one shoulder. "Enemy's beat it
for the woods, screechin' their heads off--them that ain't jellied under
them stones. What ye got to pick on this feller for?--bad cess to him!"
McKay essayed a grin, tried to answer, made a wheezing sound, and rubbed
his throat, in which showed the prints of big Jivero fingers.
"Awright, never mind apologizin'. Ye sure busted this guy's neck right.
Come on, le's git the rest o' the gang."
Together they forged on along the tumbled mass of stone, squinting
sharply at every prostrate form they found, the captain turning his
aching neck at times from side to side.
"I figger they got slung out, same as I did," Tim roared
conversationally. "I got throwed clear and lit on my nose and went to
sleep awhile. Dang near busted me neck, I guess--she feels sort o'
crackly now. How come ye to keep that Jivero o' yourn? Fall on him?"
"Yes. Got thrown end over end. Struck on my stomach--also on his head.
Knocked us both out."
"Uh-huh. And then ye both come alive and done a dog-eat-dog stunt, hey?
Oh, loo-oo-ooey! Da-a-ave! Hoz----"
"Here!" came Knowlton's voice. Around a corner of the leveled walls a
vague shape came stumbling as if hurt. In a few more steps it became
the lieutenant, shielding his face with one arm. The other hung at his
side.
"Good!" he exclaimed. "You two are still on your legs. Where's Dave?"
"Dunno yet. What ails ye? Bust somethin'?"
"Shoulder's out of joint. Wrenched this leg somehow, too, but it's
whole. Handsome nose you've got, Tim."
"Yeah? She feels like a dill pickle. Seen Hozy? Any Jiveros around that
side?"
"José's all right. He's hunting around now for Pachac. No Jiveros,
except dead ones. Must be a frightful mess under the wall--they were
packed three deep when the rocks went over them."
"So much the better for us," was McKay's comment. "You sit down under
this tree and let us snap that shoulder back. Then wait while we find
Dave. He was on the other wall. Got any cartridges?"
"Nope. Shot out."
McKay dived a hand at the lieutenant's holster, drew out the empty
pistol, replaced it with his own. The three moved to the shelter of the
big tree near by, where Tim braced his feet and held the blond man
tight. McKay, with an outward pull, drew the dislocated shoulder back
into place. Knowlton went white and leaned against the trunk.
"You won't need a gun, probably," added the captain, "but you'd better
have one on. That one's loaded. Stick here until we come back."
He and Tim turned and squelched away through the streaming grass in
search of Rand. Now that all others of their five-cornered partnership
were accounted for, they gave no attention to the shifting figures or
the medley of noises around them, except to watch for any belated Jivero
creeping out of the debris and seeking escape. They saw none such, for
every head-hunter able to get away had gone long ago, shocked witless by
the cataclysm.
After passing the next corner, however, they slowed and began careful
inspection along the line marking the right wall, where Rand had last
been seen. Here the ruins seemed to have fallen both ways, as if the
convulsed earth had twisted like a wounded snake, heaving some parts of
the roughly cemented barrier outward while others toppled in toward the
house. As they advanced, the rain began to decrease and the wreckage
became more plain.
Along it was proceeding work of mingled succor and slaughter. Men of
Pachac, armed with spears and clubs picked up from the sodden ground,
were using them as levers to pry loose members of their own tribe or as
weapons to exterminate Jiveros trapped among the stones. No quarter was
given or asked. Head-hunters died with fierce defiance on their faces,
savage to the last. The Americans saw, scowled, but said nothing. It
was the primal law of the jungle--kill or be killed.
Some distance down the wet stones, they paused. There a little knot of
white Indians, themselves smeared red from hurts received in the
collapse, were working carefully to extricate a half-crushed man of
their race. One of them, spying the American pair, pointed downward and
grunted rapidly. Though the words meant little to the listeners, they
saw in the Indian face something that brought them up on the rocks.
There the aborigine pointed at McKay's boots, then down under the
trapped man.
"Gripes! Must be Dave!" guessed Tim. "Pair o' boots in there, under this
hurt guy!"
Their eyes met. Then each looked quickly away. If Rand was caught under
those stones----
Restraining their impulse to jump in and help--for more men would only
hinder the work--they stood tensely waiting while the hole was enlarged
and the Indian drawn out, his face gray with suffering but his jaws
clamped tight. Then they got a look into the ruin.
"Poor Davey!" McKay muttered.
They saw a dead Jivero. From below him, between his right arm and his
side, projected a booted leg.
For a moment they stood motionless, dreading the sight of the mangled
form which must lie beneath that of the enemy. Then they started. The
leg had moved!
It strained weakly as if trying to draw itself back. The foot quivered,
jerked from side to side, grew still.
McKay scanned the rocks rimming the opening. They were loosely balanced,
likely at any moment to slip and drop. He indicated a couple which must
be held or braced. The Indians remaining--two had carried away their
injured comrade--stepped to the menacing blocks and strained back
against them. McKay and Tim stooped, braced themselves, and, with a
slow, careful pull, drew the Jivero up and away from his death trap.
Pitching him outward, they reached again and grasped the boots, both now
exposed. With another steady draw they lifted Rand.
He was lying aslant, head much lower than his feet, curved in a strained
position in a crooked cavern of jagged stones. If he had been conscious
when that foot moved, he now had lost his senses again. His face,
appearing from a dim crevice as he was raised by the legs, was dark and
bloated from suffocation. Under him the rescuers glimpsed a welter of
smashed things which had been men.
They drew him up and bore him away down the slippery rocks. The Indians
loosed their holds on the stones and skipped aside. The blocks grated,
slid, and fell with a sullen crunch into the place where Rand had lain.
Out on good ground they laid him down and tore off his shirt, which hung
in ripped rags. McKay felt for his heart. It was beating.
"Glory be!" rejoiced Tim, interpreting the slight relaxation of his
captain's face. "Begorry, he ain't hardly scratched, neither! Head's all
right--legs look straight--arms all sound--how's the ribs? Caved? Nope.
Say, them dead guys jest sort o' cushioned him. Squeezed him black in
the face, but that's all. Gee, talk about luck!"
And a few minutes later, sitting groggily up and blinking at the figures
which seemed whirling around him, Rand proved Tim's words true. His
frame was whole, though wrenched and strained. His constricted lungs
were functioning normally again, the congestion of blood had left his
head, and the few cuts and bruises he had received were of no
consequence. Yet, but for the fact that a living man of Pachac happened
to be caught above him and attract the attention of other Indians, he
would have been squeezed to death down in the chaotic rubble long before
he could have been found. He owed his life to pure luck.
"Lo, Rod," he mumbled. "Where's--Merry? What happened?"
"Merry's holding up a tree and waiting. Nothing much happened. Volcanic
explosion somewhere up north--earthquake--everything tumbled down,
including us. Jiveros are mostly buried. Now we're all taking a shower
bath. That's all. Feel like walking?"
Rand dizzily shook his head. But after a minute the surroundings stopped
whizzing around him, and he began struggling up. His mates promptly
aided him to his feet. Arm in arm, the three passed back down the line
to rejoin Knowlton. And as they went, the rain ceased.
In the clearing air they saw Knowlton's blond head bobbing along beyond
the rock jumble which had been the front wall, and before they reached
the corner he came limping around it, his face beaming at sight of the
rescued man. He halted and waited, gave Rand a slap on the back as they
passed, and fell in behind. Reunited once more, the four went on to find
José.
As they passed on, their minds now at ease regarding one another, they
saw in stark detail the work of the sudden spasm of nature. The house
and the walls were stone heaps. From them now sounded no more of the
half-conscious moans; for the injured men of Pachac had died in their
traps or were being taken out, while all the Jiveros caught alive had
been executed. Here and there protruded a hand or a foot of some warrior
who never again would fight. At intervals lay broken white Indians
attended by little groups of their own people. And at one spot was a
number of bodies lying side by side on the soaked earth. Among them were
a few women--the fighting women who had gone to death like men.
In the hillside itself gaped narrow fissures. Beyond, the faces of the
mountains were altered. Bare slides grinned out where had been unbroken
green. In the precipice along which the four had toiled not many days
ago yawned new crevasses. Many other changes, of which the Americans
never learned, had been wrought around them. One, of which they were not
to remain long in ignorance, was that the mine of the Almagros was no
more. Another was that the underground passage through which José and
his people had entered this place was blocked forever.
As they rounded the corner beyond which José had last been seen, they
found no sign of him. In the thin mist now rising from the drying ground
moved only the forms of the Indian garrison and their women. They were
alternately giving attention to their less fortunate fellows and
scanning the jungle.
"If those Jiveros come back now----" muttered Rand.
"Huh! Come back from where, feller?" demanded Tim. "Under them there
rocks? That's where dang near all of 'em are. Them that got clear are
runnin' yet, and ye won't----"
A sudden yell cut him short. It came from the rear end of the mass
which had been the house. Up there the startled four saw the missing
José. He had been clambering around to get a comprehensive view of the
devastation. Now he was prancing and waving his arms as if demented.
"Señores!" came his shout. "Come here! El oro!"
"What! The gold?" burst in one amazed chorus from the battered soldiers
of fortune.
"Sí! We have it at last! Valgame Dios, it is a treasure like that of the
Incas! It is----See! With your own eyes come and look! Santa Maria! What
a yellow gleam!"
Still throwing his arms about, he disappeared down the rubble of stone
and timber. Afire with excitement, the Americans leaped away along the
line, even Knowlton forgetting his painful leg. Climbing over the ruins
of the wall between, they joined José, and stood petrified at what they
saw.
From the space where the rear wall had stood now slanted a pile of
yellow bars. That wall, buckling outward, had spewed out with its stones
what had been piled just behind those stones. There, in one gleaming
heap, lay tons of the precious mineral. How many more tons were
concealed within the ruin no man dared guess.
"See, it is as you said, Tim and capitán! Behold that wall--it ran from
the vault to the end of the house. It was hollow--it has not so much
stone as the other wall. There was a passage in it--some way of swinging
aside blocks in the vault--another entrance here at the house. The
house had a double rear wall with much space between the two--I have
thought before now that somehow the house seemed longer outside than
inside, but I never thought to measure. And the gold was piled to the
roof! Por Dios! There may be an underground space, too--there may
be----"
His voice cracked. Dazedly the others followed his gestures as he talked
and danced about. They saw that he had hit the truth. Their eyes came
back and clung to the golden glory rising from their feet to the wrecked
treasure room of the Almagros. Then they sank down on the nearest stones
and dumbly fumbled in their soggy clothing for something with which to
make cigarettes.
So, at last, fickle Fate had thrown at the fighting five the golden lure
which she had dangled so long before their eyes. And the grim mountains
of the Pastassa spurs, which had held the merciless Almagros in their
unyielding grip until no Almagro was left, now had smashed all their
handiwork into chaos. A little while, and the gulf where they had lived
and died would be a noisome pest hole. And the booty wrung from the
bowels of the stone by four generations of torture and treachery would
go out on the backs of men who fought hard--but fought clean.
CHAPTER XXX
THE KING OF NO MAN'S LAND
The banks of the Tigre Yacu were full.
Between the shores where, a few weeks ago, clear water had crept
languidly along at the bottom of a rock-strewn natural ditch, now rolled
a turbid flood; and from both sides sounded the plash and gurgle of
smaller streams hurrying in with the burden of water dumped on the
hillsides by the latest rain. Now the sun had broken out again, and from
every dripping leaf sparkled gems of moisture.
In a little cove, where the downward-sweeping waters slowed and swung
about in a wheeling eddy, a grotesque object floated and tugged at its
moorings of stout bush-rope; a nondescript creation such as the
mysterious Tigre Yacu, which before now had washed many a weird thing
southward in its eternal journey from the cordillera to the Marañon,
never had upheld on its restless bosom. Two stout canoes, covered over,
formed its nucleus; reinforced with logs, they upheld a platform with
built-up sides and curving roof. A combination of balsa, pontoon, raft,
and box, it was, and as ugly a vessel as ever traveled jungle waters.
Yet, for all its homeliness, it was a treasure ship. The boxlike
platform held a fortune in pure gold.
Now the men who had created it stood lined along the bank: four
Americans, one hawk-faced Spaniard, and some forty Indians whose skins
were only a shade darker than those revealed by rips in the clothing of
the khaki-clad white men. Near the lean South American loitered a number
of lithe young women whose dark eyes turned to him at his every word or
movement. Farther back were a sprinkling of other women and children.
These were the survivors of the no-quarter battle with the Jiveros and
the earth convulsion which had crushed that fight into nothingness at
its desperate height; the five partners and the death-thinned people of
Pachac. Among them Pachac himself no longer stood.
Caught and killed in the collapse of the wall he was holding, he had
passed out as he would have wished--in the flaming fury of hand-to-hand
battle with his foes. Now the commander of the tribe was the man whom he
had taken as foster-son--José Martinez, outlaw, killer, and son of the
Conquistadores.
For days after the wrecking of the house of the Almagros, every
able-bodied man, woman, and child had toiled feverishly at the great
gold pile, the white men driven by their own treasure hunger and the
Indians by the crackling voice of their Spanish chief. From dawn to
dark, with hardly a pause to snatch food from the plantation, they had
transported the yellow bars in a steady stream to a spot well up the
nearest mountain, where the air was fresh and clean. Fortunately, the
sky had remained overcast much of the time, and, as often happens in the
Andes region after an earthquake, the air had been decidedly cold. Thus
favored, the toilers had been able to labor long in the midst of the
ruins before the sun turned hot and the air became pestilential. By the
time they were compelled to flee, the place had been quite thoroughly
looted.
Even had it been possible and desirable to extract and bury or burn the
dead and reconstruct the demolished house, the grim decree of the
mountains forbade it. Not only had they plugged the natural drain of the
gulf in their spasm, but at every fresh rainfall they sluiced more water
into the pool which had formed and was stealthily creeping farther and
higher along the bottom and sides of the misshapen bowl. Henceforth no
man should live in the chasm where so much of human maltreatment and
misery had resulted from their first admittance of men. When the deluges
of the forthcoming wet season should end, the sinister knoll and its
stones and bones would be sunk under a stagnant lagoon wherein only
reptilian creatures could spawn; and the Almagros, after all their
ruthlessness and strife, should lie forgotten forever in a bed of
slime. So the stern giants towering around had determined, and so it
should be.
But none of those who toiled to salvage the treasure trove had any
desire to remain. As soon as their prize was safe they sought a way out,
eager to be gone for all time from that hole. And, thanks to the jungle
craft of the nomads of Pachac, they found at length an exit whereby they
could reach again the vague path by which they had journeyed up the
Tigre. Thanks also to the Indians, they lived off the forest and the
bush while the gold was brought out and packed down the trail and while
the clumsy river craft was built and loaded.
Nowhere had they met Jiveros. But, a few days after the earthquake, they
had heard the drums off to the west begin to grumble again, and guessed
that the survivors of the savage expedition had returned to their own
land with their tale of doom. Nor had they seen again any sign of the
gaunt green-dyed servitors of Flora Almagro who had speared the escaping
toeless man and forced the American adventurers over the edge of the
abyss. What had become of them only the inscrutable jungle could tell;
and, as always, the jungle remained dumb.
Now the time for parting was at hand. And for a time no word was said.
Wistfully, yet proudly, José stood among his people and looked at his
four comrades who were leaving him. Like his men, he wore on his body
only the loin mat of the white Indians; but, unlike them, he retained
around his shaggy head a faded red kerchief, and in one hand he held his
battered old rifle: his crown and his scepter as king of the little
tribe. Down one bare leg, too, dangled his machete.
None of his hard-won gold was on the bank. In fact, it was miles away,
secreted in a cave which he had discovered just outside the mountains
ringing the gulf. His only visible possessions now were his gun, his
bush-knife, and the partly filled tin of .44 cartridges which the
Americans previously had left with the updrawn canoes.
"No, señores, I will not have my share of the treasure carried farther,"
he had said when making his cache. "Of what good is it to me? Now that I
have it, I can think of only one use for it; and the time to use it so
has not yet come. You are eager to go out, while I--where should I go?
Let us move on with your gold. Mine will keep here."
The Americans, though asking no questions, had guessed at what he
intended eventually to do with his prize--and had guessed wrong. Now,
standing beside their laden craft, they thought of it again. McKay
bluntly spoke out.
"Where do you expect to hang out after you leave here, José? We'd like
to keep in touch with you. Going back over the Andes to gild the palms
of the authorities and enjoy life? Or down the Amazon? Or over to
Europe?"
A slow smile passed over the outlaw's face and died. He answered with
the cool dignity of a caballero.
"Once, capitán, a misbegotten creature arose between us--a burro with a
bull head. It came up because you had a thought like the one you have
now. But it shall not lift its head again.
"You think the natural thing, capitán, but you have it wrong. I, José
Martinez, return across the Andes and buy the favor of officials? Bah!
Who throws meat to yelping dogs which are too far off to bite him? Not
I. Still less do I journey to those dogs and drop the meat into their
greedy jaws.
"And down the Amazon, or across the sea, should I be content? No. I have
been too long a wild rover of the jungle. In the jungle I stay."
His eyes went to the girls near him, and again his lips widened--this
time in the sardonic grin of José the bushman.
"And if I would desert my brides, amigos--for they never could come with
me into the cities, and I must abandon them if I go--if I thought of
forsaking my little tigresses of the Tigre Yacu, there is another reason
why I should stand by them."
The four looked into his twinkling eyes, then at his girl wives.
"What! Already?" blurted Knowlton.
"Why not, señor?" laughed the other. "Did I not once say to you that if
we Spaniards would pause at times between our fighting and our gold
hunting we could people the world with fighting men? And every man
should prove his words by deeds, is it not true? Unless Huarma and her
sisters and I are much mistaken, soon there will be five little Josés
asking me for little guns to play with."
"Gee gosh!" muttered Tim.
"Quite so, Señor Tim. And that is not all. The four sisters of my wives
have decided that they also should become brides of their chief. And who
am I that I should deny them? So all the nine daughters of Pachac become
the wives of the son of Pachac."
McKay threw up his hands.
"Come on, fellows," he said. "He's raving. Let's go."
"One moment, capitán," laughed the white chief. "Help me with a problem.
With sons each year for twenty years, how many shall I have?"
The captain shook his head and glanced at the boat. Rand answered.
"Barring twins, one hundred and eighty."
"Oof!" grunted Tim. "Cap, ye're right. He's crazy as a bedbug. Hozy,
jest wait till the first nine all git to squallin' together, and ye'll
never wait for the other hundred and seventy-odd. Ye'll come a-runnin'
and jump into this here river, squeakin': 'Here goes nothin''!"
"You do not know me, comrade," chuckled José. "If they vex me I shall go
out and kill a few Jiveros. That is one reason why I stay--to kill
Jiveros."
"A laudable ambition," conceded Knowlton. "But where does your gold fit
into your plans? None of my business, maybe, but----"
"But why is it not your business, friend? I will tell you what is in my
mind."
He looked along the line of his adopted people, and his face sobered.
"There was a time, before I had fought against those Jiveros, when I had
for them some respect. I said to you that, if my head must be taken by
any man, I would wish it to go to those fighting wild men. But since I
have fought them, since I saw the headless bodies of those poor fellow
slaves of mine who were cut to pieces on the plantation, since I have
heard the true tales of them told by Pachac and his people----No, I have
no respect for those accursed ones! They are beasts!
"Now, as you say, I have gold. Now that I have gold, it means little to
me--the gold itself. It was a bait, a lure, a thing that kept me
striving on in spite of death and the devil. And that struggle to get
it, señores, the fighting and adventure and hope and despair--that was
the real prize--that was living! And far above all those things, amigos,
I treasure the memories of the days and nights I have spent with my
North American comrades: men I could trust, men I could like, men in
whose company I could sleep without awaking to find a knife near my
throat.
"But that time is past, and you go. Now I look to what is ahead of
José--and of the people of José. I have looked on the mountains to the
north and found them good. Not that hole of the Almagros, but the great
wild cordillera which no man owns; where the shrinkers of heads travel,
where more gold lies waiting, where the law of the yellow-dog men of the
western cities does not reach. I will make those mountains mine!"
The old flush of enthusiasm was rising in his cheeks, the old ring
creeping into his voice.
"Sí! Mine! I will not be a petty chief of a vagabond tribe--I will be a
king of the wild lands! A barbarian king, perhaps, as you said not long
ago--but a ruler of hard fighting men, a maker of war on the demons who
shrink the heads of men and make beasts of women. Sí! I, José!
"Behold these people of Pachac. They have no tribe name that I can
recognize. They call themselves only The White Ones. No, not Yámeos. The
White Ones. And in other parts of this thick country between the spurs,
and north toward the Curaray, are more of The White Ones. So these tell
me. They tell me, too, that they can lead me to some of those other
White Ones, and from them we shall learn of still more. All are bitter
haters of the Jiveros.
"Now for my gold. Already that young half-Spanish son of Pachac had
trained a few of these men to use rifles. I shall carry on what he
began. With my gold I trade for more guns--and I get the best! I buy
many cartridges. I bring together the other White Ones. And there in the
mountains we make a stronghold that shall make that one of the Almagros
seem a house of clay. We drive the Jiveros howling west to the
Morona--to the Santiago! For Dios, we sweep them back against the Great
Cordillera itself!"
The four stood fascinated as the magnitude of his ambition fired them.
Then Rand spoke.
"And then, the first thing you know, you'll be at war with two
governments."
"Sí? The government of Peru, which has cast me out? The government of
Ecuador, which cannot rule what it claims? They cannot even agree on
their own boundaries, as you señores must know. Ecuador calls this its
Provincia del Oriente, but what does it mean? Nothing. And to me the
paper laws and decrees of both of them are nothing. This is No Man's
Land, and I will be its king!"
"Begorry, it's jest like what I said!" exulted Tim. "Didn't I tell ye
so, Dave, down by that red-hot lake? The King o' No Man's Land, jest
like I seen it comin'! And I'll tell the world ye'll make one
rip-roarin' king, too, ye ol' scalawag. Dang it, I wisht I could stick
round awhile. If I only had a new outfit----But shucks, I got to git me
money home. So long, ol'-timer, and more power to ye!"
He reached a red-haired fist and gave the chief of The White Ones a
mighty grip. In turn the others followed his example. Then they
clambered aboard their treasure ship, set themselves at the powerful
steering oar they had built, and nodded to José.
Slowly, regretfully, the outlaw lifted his machete to sever the
bush-ropes mooring the straining craft.
"Adios, camaradas!" he called.
"Hasta luego," countered McKay.
"What! You will come back some day?"
"Never can tell. We might get bored and come looking for some
excitement."
"Hah! Come to me in the mountains and I will feed you excitement until
you choke! Until then----Vaya con Dios! Go with God!"
The blade chopped down. The craft swung outward and checked. Again the
steel fell, shearing another rope, and it floated free.
In a final chorus of yells it gathered headway and surged downstream,
its crew swinging at the long rudder. Then it settled itself for its
long voyage to the mighty Marañon. Hands shot up in the last gesture of
farewell. Around a slight bend it drifted, and the jungle of the Tigre
Yacu blotted it from sight.
For a time the red-crowned man at the water's edge stood motionless, his
face somber, his dark eyes dwelling wistfully on the spot where his
partners had vanished. Then, with a sigh, he stooped and lifted the case
of cartridges to his shoulder.
Upstream he turned, warily scanning the bush. Upstream the armed
warriors and the rest of the little tribe silently followed him. And
into the green shadows the coming King of No Man's Land and the nucleus
of his army of The White Ones passed and were gone.
THE END
* * * * *
Transcriber's Note: Both tigre and tiger used in this book.
[End of Tiger River, by Arthur O. Friel]